


Here There Be Monsters

by avoidingavoidance



Series: The Book of the Dead [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Blood, Claustrophobia, Drowning, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Horror, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Mentions of Cancer, Panic, Past Child Abuse, Possession, Sequel, Smoking, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-29
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-02-23 03:19:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 81,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2532182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avoidingavoidance/pseuds/avoidingavoidance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two years. </p><p>It's been two years since we fought tooth and nail against the ruination of mankind, and for two years it's been pretty quiet. Marco and I, we're moving forward. Well, we were.</p><p>I guess a story about ghosts never really ends.</p><p>(The sequel to Ghost Story.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Rising Darkness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You'd think after all this time, I wouldn't get caught with my pants so far down anymore. I knew it was too damn quiet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome home.
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)

You know me. You know my story. 

You know already how I fell into damnation, my hands fisted tight in the torn robes of a holy man, and you watched us yank each other back out. So forgive me for not giving you the spiel again. I’m not exactly in the mood.

You remember my name, right? Jean Kirschtein, supernatural janitor. Say it five times fast, you’ll get it sooner or later.

It’s been quiet here. At least, as far as quiet goes in shitty old crime-ridden Trost. Nearly two years have passed since that bullshit with the averted apocalypse or whatever. It still hasn’t quite hit me the way it’s probably supposed to, not yet.

One time, I was over having beers with Eren and Levi, and in the middle of an unenthused conversation about hockey, Eren leans over to me and blurts, “Holy shit, dude.” I stare at him like he’s fucking crazy (which he might well be), and he continues, “You _saved the world,_ you know that?”

Levi and I, we look at each other, and both of us kind of feel that sinking sensation. The feeling of displacement. That weird, piercing surreality that I’m some big gay Captain America. What the hell.

I finally stopped dreaming of elevators about a year ago. Since last August, I haven’t jolted awake in a cold sweat, blinded by the white-lit steel marred black by her filthy, tiny hand, feeling frantically beside me to make sure that Marco’s still there, still _whole_. No pieces missing, no darkness seeping from the invisible scar marring his back, the exit wound present only in our memories. 

Yeah, between a good, solid round of therapy and the passage of time, I’ve been sleeping peacefully for almost a year. At first, I barely dreamt at all, which was nice. Quiet time is something I’ve come to appreciate.

It turns out, the loudest thunder is that which cracks through the still night.

The walls of my quiet dreamland started coming closer, growing darker. Still, it wasn’t bad. I’m not really scared of tight spaces.

At least, I wasn’t. 

Not until the dark tomb I’m trapped in at night started leaking water. Not until it started filling up little by little, night by night. Not until the water began lapping around my ears, into my mouth, up my cheeks, even as I shoved my face desperately harder against the unforgiving roof of my prison.

As I struggle to gasp in the bare inch of air the water leaves me, as the frigid depths rise up and fill my ears and cover my eyes, the chill brings with it a haunted voice.

_‘His devil is long-caged.’_

\--

I’m not fucking _stupid_ , alright. I mean, sometimes I am. I’m human, it comes with the territory. But still, I’ve been doing this shit for long enough to send it to college, and I know Bad Things Coming when I fucking dream them.

The second time my coffin floods completely, ice plugging my veins and submerging my lungs and my brain, that _voice_ whispering raggedly under the water-mute sounds of my screams, I go straight to Levi.

At like three am on a Tuesday. He’s _thrilled_. 

He lets me freeze on his doorstep for about a minute and a half while he takes in my sheepish expression, my face flushed in the chill October wind, before he lets me in.

Thank god for psychics, man. I don’t even have to tell him what I need. He just shoves me into a chair and sits across from me, rolling his eyes when I cross my still-frozen legs under me, and leans his forehead against mine. He’s clammy.

I wonder idly if he’s having these dreams too.

I close my eyes and sit in silence, leaning maybe just a tiny bit against him. (Hey, we’ve known each other since I was ten and he hauled my ass out of a morgue. Cut me some slack.) After a long while of him probing my subconscious, he leans away from me and lights a cigarette. I decline when he offers me one. Still nicotine-free, somehow.

“I don’t feel her anywhere,” he says around a billowing cloud of smoke. “But I wouldn’t say you’re entirely alone in there.”

Groaning, I bury my face in my hands and curl in on myself. Why? Why this? Why _again?_

After cursing everything in existence and underneath it, I lean up again and rake my hands through my hair with an exasperated sigh. He talks before I can, as usual. “It’s just a touch. You’re not harboring fugitives. Whatever it is, though, it’s getting stronger.”

I stare blankly at him. “Can you, uh.” Levi quirks an eyebrow. Clearing my throat, I mumble, “Can you, y’know, take it out?”

He rolls his eyes and pulls off his cigarette again. I know, I know. It’s not a goddamn splinter. If he could, he’d have done it already. Heaving a huge sigh, I uncross my legs and sidle out of the armchair pow-wow, then stuff my hands awkwardly in my pockets. Levi watches me kick at his carpet, undoubtedly feeling my dull anxiety with crystal clarity, before he asks, “Are you going to tell him?”

Flicking my eyes to the floor, I give an unenthused shrug. I’ve told Marco everything except the words whispered to me, except the frozen depths finally filling my lungs. I think he knows something’s up, but he’s letting me shrug it off for now.

You’d think we’d be the utmost of honest with each other. For the most part, we are, I swear. I even tell him when I have those attacks of guilty conscience about all that shit two years ago. Marco holds me close and whispers that he loves me, though, even when I’m near-panicking and reminding him of every horrible thing I’ve ever done to him.

I can’t tell him about this, though, because Levi and I are both thinking the same thing.

We only really know one person who’s ever had a devil inside of him. Well, I’m just speaking for myself. God only knows what Levi’s seen.

The only other person I can think of is Armin, but it’s been six days since the last full moon, and I only started drowning yesterday. Kinda rules him out in favor of the other option.

I’m fucking _terrified._

_What if it’s not over?_

“Hey,” Levi interrupts, very suddenly standing in front of me. I jolt, my hands shaking in my pockets, and he has the good grace to throw me some shade when I lean over to steal one of his cigarettes. It’s only _one_. I light it, immediately feeling the calming rush of nicotine, and close my eyes. “We don’t know anything yet,” he says finally, moving to perch on the arm of the chair he’d abandoned. “So we can’t assume anything about Marco or anyone else.”

Feeling forlorn, I tap my cigarette over his ashtray and give him the most piteous look I can muster. He grimaces, then stands again and moves to pull something out of his printer tray. “This’ll cheer you up,” he says as he hands me the paper. I raise my eyebrows, look down at it, and immediately grin so wide my damn cigarette almost falls from between my teeth.

“ _Oh my god yes,_ ” I say in a rush, before I fold the paper into my pocket and grind out what’s left of my cigarette. “Thanks, man.”

Levi nods, then grumbles, “Now fuck off back to bed,” which I gladly do.

My day just got _much_ fucking better.

\--

Marco gives me a sleepy frown when I crawl back into bed, turning to face me before I can finish winding myself around him. “Been at Levi’s?” he asks blearily, his words slurring together. I pause above him.

“Yeah.” He sniffles. I sit back on my heels, smiling softly at him. He can smell the smoke on me. It bothers him, I know it does. I’d changed before I came to bed, but the smell has a way of clinging to my skin, my hair, my breath. “Want me to go shower?” 

He shakes his head and rolls onto his back, reaching his arms out to me and—god, _pouting_ in the waning moonlight. I grin and flop onto his chest, kissing him warmly. He’s so damn cute. 

I wrap my arms around his waist and my legs around his, effectively trapping him against me, and he rolls into my chest and grumpily winds his arms around my neck, wiggling closer in my grasp. Burying my face in his hair, I run my hands idly up his huge t-shirt, the only thing he’s wearing. My cold fingers against his toasty skin soothe me, but the chill seems to perturb him, so I pull my hands back out and just settle my arms around him.

As I get sleepier, my nervousness returns to me. Having Marco pressed against me, though, wrapped around him like a damn starfish, I start to feel my system ticking down into quiet again. He has that effect on me. Soothing, comfortable. He’s like a damn furnace.

Still, he can’t follow me where I go. I’m alone there.

After I’ve aggressively cuddled him for a while, he nuzzles into my neck and rasps, “You okay?”

I sigh into his hair. I’m becoming less and less okay the longer these dreams go on. Not really sure I’ll ever be able to swim again, and I know for sure that I won’t ever be taking any jobs with critters that like to bury their food. Christ only knows what kinds of phobias are waiting in the darkness now.

No matter how bad I want to tell him, I _can’t_. I can’t tell him about the vague threats that fill my chest and steal my breath. 

If there’s anyone more worried than me about shit like this, it’s Marco.

Marco. God, my _perfect_ , beautiful lover. Boyfriend, I guess. I can’t help but feel like that title is insufficient, though. Which is why, as of late, I’ve been pondering asking him if he’d consider accepting another title. If he’d let what we have occupy some space on his left hand.

Can’t say I fucking understand marriage, but it sounds like something I’d wanna do with Marco, and that’s good enough for me.

I’d pondered too long, let my mind wander too long, so Marco leans out of my neck and gives me a mildly concerned, definitely awake look. “Jean?”

“Sorry, sorry,” I murmur, leaning forward for another kiss. I close my eyes and nuzzle my nose into his as I lie, “Just tired.”

He hums, and I know he doesn’t believe me. He trusts me, though. There’s a big difference between the two. I just snuggle him closer and mumble cutesy shit to him until he relaxes, and then I comb my fingers through his hair until his breath evens out against my neck, and eventually his comfort and my continued whispers lull me back into a deep, thankfully dreamless sleep.

\--

The paper I’d gotten from Levi is an online press release, with a date, a time, and three words scrawled on the back:

_October 19th, 8:00 pm, King’s Pride._

Blah blah. I’m only really interested in the last word, the _third_ word. I could fucking kiss this paper. In fact, I have, about four times since I’ve woken up, because it fills me with such childlike glee that I’m seriously considering cutting it out and putting it in my wallet like a family photo.

What word is it?

The _best_ word I have ever had the fortune of laying my eyes on.

_Hafgufu._

It’s an Old Norwegian word. Now, normally I’d light that shit on fire and then throw it off a building, given my less-than-positive recent experiences with the Norse, but this word is special. I’ll allow it. And why’s that? Well, simply put: the hafgufu is a particular creature of ocean-based legend. 

It’s a motherfucking kraken. 

A _kraken!_ An honest-to-god giant-ass fucking man-eating boat-eating world-devouring giant cephalopod. This is the _best day_. I’ve never been so goddamn happy to get an assignment. The only way this shit could get better is if Levi had dumped fucking Cthulhu Undying into my lap. I am _giddy_. 

Marco notices my enthusiasm when he finally rolls out of bed, looking beautiful and grumpy, his hair sticking up _magnificently_ on one side. He stares at me blearily while I bustle around the bright kitchen of our little South Trost apartment, filling the whole damn place with the smells of coffee and breakfast. Marco, natch, is interested in only one of those things right now. 

He comes and leans against my back once he’s helped himself to a mug of extra-strong jet fuel, nuzzling into the crook of my neck with a little grumble. I spear half a sausage on the end of a fork (yes, I have since invested in real kitchenware, fuck you very much) and reach back to nudge his head with my knuckle, and when he looks up I take the liberty of stuffing my meat into his mouth. Heh.

“Mmph,” he grouses, before he chews noisily in my ear.

“Hi.” 

“You’re up.”

“How astute,” I tease as I turn the stove off, then turn to settle my arms around his shoulders. He can’t help but smile at my cheer, setting his coffee on the counter so he can wrap his arms around my waist. “Say, love, what are you doing on Sunday after church?”

The way he squints at me makes me wonder if I should ask when he’s more conscious, but then his eyes wander the way they do when he’s pondering something, until he finally gives me a lopsided shrug. “Nothing, I don’t think. Why?”

“Oh good,” I reply, grinning and leaning up to nip playfully at his lips. “Because we _totally_ have a super fancy date.”

He raises his eyebrows, dipping to brush his lips against mine briefly before he reaches for his coffee. It’s still hot, but he doesn’t wince when he takes a careful sip, even though I’m entirely sure he burned his tongue. I nudge him toward the kitchen table while I finish assembling breakfast.

After graciously refilling his coffee, I set a plate piled high with a breakfasty amalgamation between us and toss him a fork. We eat in comfortable silence for a while, him slowly waking up as I cram cheesy heaps of eggs into my face and hum happily over the prospect of getting to fire an actual harpoon at an actual kraken. I might try to tape the whole experience so I can relive it for years to come.

Marco squints at me about midway through the monstrosity I call an omelet, spearing a few greasy mushrooms with his fork before saying, “Did you get a job from Levi?” I nod, ignoring the thick string of cheese trailing from my lips to the plate. “Is that why you’re so chipper?” I nod again, flashing him a giant smile. He stares at me, obviously mildly perturbed by my outrageous cheer before noon. I can’t blame him. Every other day of the year, I’m a lousy, grumpy asshole, and yet somehow he finds it in him to love me.

Today’s different, though. Today is _kraken day_.

Marco and I finish out the pot of coffee between us before we retreat back to the bed for more cuddling. And maybe some fooling around. What better use is there for days off, really.

“Jean,” he says somewhere around mid-afternoon, his hair now sticking up on the other side instead. I hum, lacing my fingers behind my head, and look over at him. “What’s Sunday?”

“Uh,” I reply eloquently, “The nineteenth?”

“I mean, uh, why the super fancy date night?”

“What,” I laugh, turning over to drag him closer to me now that our temperatures have settled a little. “I’m not allowed to spoil you?”

He chuckles, letting me wrap myself around him again with a content hum, then leans in and kisses me softly. “It’s for the job, isn’t it.”

Shit.

I puff out my cheeks and look anywhere but at him, but he just laughs more and buries his face in my neck. He’s too damn smart, I swear to god. Either that, or he knows me too damn well. Near two years we’ve been together, I suppose it makes sense by now.

Rolling out of bed into the cold, cruel world outside of our blankets, I grab Levi’s paper off the desk and cannonball back into bed with a grin. I swear, every time I look at it, my heart skips a beat. This is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing, though. I’m allowed to be stoked.

I crawl back under the blankets and show him the scrawl on the back, peering over the edge of the sheet at him as he squints. His brow furrows when he reads my favorite part, but before he can ask what it means, my eye catches the goddamn headline of the stupid press release for the first time.

I could _kill_ Levi.

_‘Wave of antique ship bombings spreads north: King’s Pride at risk?’_

Fuck.

\--

The _King’s Pride_ is the only still-functional ship of its kind in the country. It’s also fucking _notorious_ for attracting supernatural bullshit.

It was stolen by the US Navy, lit up with mutinies, suspected of pirate activity, and spent a pretty solid chunk of time speared upside down on a rocky Irish coastline before it was brought to good old Trost become a fancy-ass restaurant. It’s gone up in flames something like four times in the last twenty years, with each fire claiming several lives.

If that doesn’t fucking _scream_ ‘haunted’ to you, I don’t know what to tell you.

In my youth, Levi once sent me to deal with a haunting in the freezer, and while I was masquerading as a busboy and also trying to handle the very angry frozen chef, I managed to steal an entrée that was sent back for ‘too much pink in the steak.’

Let me tell you, fucking snobby rich people. Whoever sent that gift from god back was a highly misguided individual. I _still_ haven’t ever experienced a steak quite that perfect, and that was like ten years ago.

So, I have mixed feelings.

On one hand, fucking _enlighteningly_ delicious food. On the other hand, haunted-ass boat.

If I had a third hand, it’d be holding the kraken that’s apparently making its way up the Eastern seaboard and eating other historical landmark vessels. And may potentially be gunning for said haunted-ass boat. That I have unwittingly agreed to bring my husband-candidate to for culinary transcendence.

Fucking lovely.

\--

It doesn’t take long for me to lay all this out for Marco, what with his prodding at my fucking lemon-sour face once I come to this less-than-comfortable realization. 

He’s so full of surprises, though.

“Okay,” he says, looking back up at me from the paper lying between us. “We’ve had worse.”

“We might get eaten,” I deadpan. Just making sure he gets the stakes.

He ponders again, running a hand through his thoroughly fucked hair. “I mean, we almost got eaten last month.” Oh yeah. The Sphinx. Fuck the Sphinx. I nod, conceding. He continues to surprise me when he laughs, “It’ll be fun. I’ve never almost been eaten on a boat before.”

I stare at him for a good, long time, even after he tilts his head questioningly. Eventually, I regain control of my love-struck meat sack, and I tackle him to the bed and kiss the bejeezus out of him.

If he’ll have me, I’m gonna marry the _shit_ out of Marco. Swear to god.

\--

I spend the week teaching and grading midterms, and Marco spends the week preparing for church, fording rivers of Concerned Old Women and their myriad complaints, and researching the vessel we’re to be dining on and potentially sinking.

Every night, I drown.

Every single fucking night, that voice whispers to me over and over. _His devil is long-caged._

You’d think it’d stop being terrifying after the nth time I’ve heard it, but the feeling of my face crushed against the lid of my coffin while I struggle against the rising silence spices up the budding repetition.

I stop sleeping by Friday night. Marco notices.

“Jean,” he says somewhere around four hours into Saturday, “You don’t have to right now, but will you tell me soon what’s happening?”

Somehow, his unwavering trust in me is like a knife turning between my ribs. I swallow, looking up at him from the couch, and my fingers itch for a cigarette. His gaze softens, his face still pale with sleep. When he comes over to the couch, his bum knee stiff from the chill and leaning him to one side slightly, I put my laptop on the floor and slink down so he can lie between my legs, his head on my chest.

We sit quietly for a while, his back rising and falling under my hand resting over his spine, fingers tracing around and around. Nervous habit. 

As soft as it is, his voice cutting through the quiet startles me slightly. “Are you having those dreams again?”

My breath hitches before I deflate under him.

He leans up onto his elbows and looks down at me, his thumb coming to run over my cheek gently. I already know don’t have to answer him, so I don’t, but he leans down and kisses me gently anyway.

Marco knows it’s not a matter of trust. Our trust for each other could keep monuments from falling. 

He knows that it’s because I’m afraid.

His eyes scan my face, even as he brushes the tips of our noses together, and we have a conversation made of sighs and soft touches rather than shaky words and my shitty jokes. 

I know I’m worrying Marco. I get bad when I don’t sleep, anxious and distant and kinda really weird, if we’re being honest. I overthink everything. My instincts dull, and I become less observant. Bad for the reaction time, too. 

I’d rather he worry about an unknown threat than worry about his devil long-caged, though. If he’s even who my dreams are talking about. I’m really grasping at straws here, but to say optimism is in my nature would be a bold-faced lie.

Either way, dreaming of my interment in the salty depths every single fucking night isn’t doing any favors for the fact that we’re about to face a monstrous creature from said salty depths. I’m anxious.

“Jean,” Marco whispers, breaking me out of that train of thought. “Love, you’re already shaking.” He moves one hand to my ribs, tracing the trembling muscles of my sides and my stomach. He’s right, they’re already going kinda weak and floppy. I’ll be slouching a lot tomorrow. “You know you’re not a kid anymore, yeah?”

“Says the man sprouting at least a dozen grey hairs a week,” I joke lamely, running my fingers through his soft hair. He graces me with a small smile, knowing that neither of us minds them, not really. Not when I get to watch each of them come in and mark another time we didn’t die. With a loud sigh, I idly wrap my thighs around his hips just to drag him closer. “I’m just nervous about this job on Sunday.”

“Is that what they’re about?”

My hands come up to his face, tracing patterns in his freckles. They’re starting to fade a little, now that the summer is past, but it’s not like they’re gonna go anywhere. I run my thumb across my favorite one, the one by his left eye, before he turns his head and presses a warm kiss into my palm.

Eyes closing, I mumble, “Kinda. It’s… there’s water. Lots.”

He pauses, then presses a few more slow kisses against my hand. “I see.”

Marco’s right. I need to sleep. I can’t pull all-nighters like I used to, not with the weight of the world we saved on my shoulders and the paltry years I’ve been allowed slowing down my system. I let him dose me with that foul sleep-aide shit NyQuil started making, and in which we should probably buy stock based on the amount we consume, and he murmurs sweet nothings to me and curls warm around me while I slip into blessedly dreamless sleep.

\--

On Saturday night, I take the sleeping shit again, and in the morning, Marco kisses me warmly before he goes to church. I notice he takes his cane with him this time. It must be raining.

My brain still kind of doped out, I fall back asleep, and I am plagued by nothing but the chill of the sheets cooling beside me.

When he wakes me up again after service, I immediately pull him back under the covers, and he laughs quietly as I doze off on his chest.

\--

“It’s been stripped of all the weaponry,” he says to me as we make our way up the riverside. “But if I read the article right, there might still be a harpoon gun on the deck somewhere. The harpoon itself’ll be locked away, if they even have one.”

“ _Dude._ ” Marco blinks at my wide grin. I’m hyper from sleeping all damn day, practically _vibrating_ with glee again. Goddamn mood swings. “I’m gonna harpoon the _shit_ out of Davy Jones.”

He doesn’t correct me. He just lets me have my cheesy joke with a warm smile, and he lets me kiss his cheek noisily too. I’m damn spoiled.

We’re both something approaching dapper, I suppose, but he definitely rocks it better than I do. He’s got those strong, broad shoulders that fill out his shirt just right, and he’s forgone the tie in favor of a classy sport coat.

I stole his nice red tie. I don’t exactly have cause to buy any of my own, what with how rarely I wear them.

We come upon the river pier where the _King’s Pride_ is docked and I lace my fingers with his, whistling in the chill breeze. He’s been pretty quick with his cane for a while now, but even better are the days where he doesn’t need it, even if they’re still few and far between. When we walk up the plank to the floating restaurant, I let him go in front of me, mostly so I can stare at his ass. He smirks at me and raises an eyebrow, but he still goes up first with no objection.

The second we’re on the ship, my wallet starts shrieking in anticipatory agony. This place is _so fancy_. It’s dark out already, and the mood lighting in the waiting area isn’t exactly helping, but it definitely enhances the classy maritime aesthetic they’re going for. Everything’s some variety of gold on wood, with carpeting that’s probably nicer than any I’ve had the pleasure of standing on before. My heels sink into the rich fibers like sand. Makes moving quickly kinda hard.

“Hi, uh,” I say to the hostess, who smiles massively and with far too many bright teeth. I wonder when the last time I combed my hair was. Did I even shave? Whatever. “Reservation for two at eight? Last name’s Kirschtein.”

She taps on a computer screen, then gives me another broad smile. “Kirschtein-Bodt?”

I smile widely to fend off the flustered squawk I already feel building and nod. Marco chokes back a splutter of his own behind me. I’m gonna _kill_ Levi. Asshole thinks he’s funny.

The girl grabs some menus and leads us back along the surprisingly large inside cabin, what used to be the cannon hold. The deck’s probably closed for the winter, which is good. If things go how I imagine they’re going to, it’s not gonna be a fun place to be in a short while.

Great.

I reach both hands behind me, and Marco catches some of my fingers in his, letting me guide him down the dim aisle. Seems like all the big tables are toward the front, so we should be nice and inconspicuous at the stern. At least, as inconspicuous as we can get with nearly every damn table booked solid. Crowds of laughing old people, young couples on dates, waiters and busboys whirling around each other… place is fucking _packed_. Not like it ever isn’t. I just wish tonight was a little less so.

I look around, peering out the windows at the river, until Marco scoots up behind me and whispers in my ear, “On your left.” I blink, then look left, and _oh, baby._

There’s a shiny glass display case between two velvet booths with the biggest fucking harpoon I have _ever seen_. I mean, it’s the only harpoon I’ve ever seen, but oh it’s massive and I’m so excited I might have a half-chub. I am living the fucking dream.

… Not that dream. 

Shaking my head, I catch up to the quick-footed hostess, still towing Marco behind me. He’s probably searching for other potential weaponry, exits, hiding places. Me, I’m just looking for anything out of the ordinary. Kraken-bait, hauntings, potential weak points in the walls, misplaced idols… the works. Together, we’ll make a pretty complete picture of what we’re dealing with. Teamwork.

We stop at a dark little table with a nice view of the river, complete with a lone flower and an entirely insufficient candle, in the relatively quieter section of the ship. I pull out Marco’s chair before I sit next to him, and the hostess hands us the menus, then flits away with some vague pleasantry. 

“It’s _really_ old,” Marco murmurs to me, leaning closer. “The harpoon, I mean. The gun must be, too. There’s no guarantee it’ll work.”

“Hey, now,” I reply, giving him a goofy pout. “Don’t jinx it.”

He laughs and kisses my cheek softly, then opens the menu as I peer out the window. There’s some kind of fishing barge floating up the river, which looks about as murky as ever. Maybe more so. I frown when I realize there’s no moon, even though it should still be around waning crescent. Shit. Must be cloudy. Rain might make life more difficult than it already is, not to mention significantly wetter, which is inconvenient for Marco but doesn’t make a lick of difference for my half of the plan. 

Which I have yet to run by him. And which I know he won’t like.

“Do you like scallops?”

I blink over at him, then up at the ceiling. “Aren’t those, like, little onion things?”

“How do you know what _shallots_ are, but not scallops?”

“Oh.” I give him a charming grin, and he rolls his eyes good-naturedly and slides a soothing hand over my knee under the table. I lean closer, looking at his menu rather than mine, and mumble, “Levi thinks it’s a kraken because of the age and prestige of the ships that are sinking.” He pauses, staring down at the frilly words scattered over the page, but I know he’s listening intently. “They like old windjammers like this because of the fate attached to them. History leaves a sort of taste in the wood, you know?”

“Is there anything else it could be?”

I shrug, running a hand through my hair. “It’s a really distinctive hunting pattern. They emerge from the deep in the fall and surge north to cold water to feed on transatlantic vessels. There hasn’t been a coastal sweep like this since colonial times, though. It’s moving from port to port and eating the oldest ship in each, so that’s weird too. They’re not usually that picky.”

“How, uh.” He scratches his cheek and peers at me. “How do they eat them?”

Grimacing, I reply, “They punch through the starboard hull, and when it starts to sink, they sort of, uh.” I sit up and make octopus tentacles with my fingers, then mimic their attack. Namely, wiggling my fingers upwards, lacing them together, and pulling down. “They give it a big hug and take it home.”

He stares at me. I smile. Only mildly exasperated, he runs his hands down his face and leans back in his chair with a soft laugh. “Good, good,” he sighs, dropping his hands to his lap and giving me a somewhat-encouraging smile. “Is there any reason we couldn’t have done this from the probably-armed steel battleship just across the river?”

Oh god. That thing. “Oh, uh. That’s military. It’s harder to sneak onto. Plus, uh…” I scratch my head and give him a sheepish grin, at which his eyebrows shoot up. “They, um. They might know my face. A little.”

He stares harder, then bites his lip against a giggle. “What, they keep wanted posters of you around?”

“Hey,” I sputter, adjusting my tie in an attempt at looking affronted. “Don’t even joke about that, that’d be a nightmare. There’s no way they’d ever get my nose right.”

“Probably not,” he laughs, reaching over to pinch it lightly. “Not with how often it changes shape.”

“I haven’t broken it in like six months,” I whine, reaching under the table to tickle his good knee. He twitches, biting his lip, then assumes the kind of face that leads me to believe our waiter has arrived just in time to catch us horsing around.

I hadn’t even looked at the menu, so I just end up getting the special, and Marco gets the scallopy things he was asking about. I imagine they’re the only thing he looked at too. The waiter is more than eager to educate us deeply about every aspect of the menu, though, and Marco surprises me again when he innocently wheedles some information about the ship itself out of the guy. Like that the brig is mostly used for storage still, and no, they don’t have any jail cells down there, and yes, the _King’s Pride_ has admittedly engaged in some acts of piracy when in the wrong hands.

Marco’s gotten so used to this shady-ass life. It’s surprising even now, almost two years later. He always was a shitty liar, but here he is, smiling and asking our waiter about pirates with a completely innocuous face.

God, I love him.

In situations like these, I usually feel a bizarre mix of pride and guilt. Right now, though, I’m all pride. My hand finds his under the table, twining our fingers on his knee. 

He knows the exact point at which to stop asking questions to elude suspicion, and so he lets the waiter zoom away to grab our drinks and put in our order. “So, what are we waiting for?” I blink at him as he asks, fiddling with a roll from the basket we’d been brought. I shrug, looking out the window again. The river’s a little more turbulent now, reflecting shards of bright colors shining from the illuminated bridge, and it looks like it might have started raining. Fuck. “Just, uh, a large crunching sound?”

“Well, when you put it that way,” I mutter, leaning over to look downriver. The Sina River forms the border for the eastern edge of Trost, then curves toward the industrial district on the south side of town before jutting out to the ocean, and on a good day the water’s nearly gelatinous in texture the whole way down. The kraken’s gonna slop up from downriver, I assume, so it seems like we got pretty good seats at least.

“Aren’t these things supposed to be huge? Can it even fit this far inland?”

“They’re like jelly.” I turn back to him, stuffing half the roll into my mouth and continuing in a shower of crumbs. “Only hard part’s the beak. They can fit anywhere the beak can.”

“… A beak.”

“Yeah.” I put my hand in front of my mouth and make beaking motions, which makes him snort. I’m glad he thinks my dumb ass is funny. Anything I can do to ease his anxiety. Cheering him up soothes me too, thankfully, so it’s for both our sakes that I make an asshole of myself and wiggle my fingers in less of a beak motion and more of a Cthulhu motion.

“And it’s supposed to hit here around nowish?”

“That’s what I’m led to believe, yeah,” I mumble, slathering the other half of my roll in butter. “So I’m thinking, right.” I lean forward again, letting him steal the bread from me while I lay out the plan of attack. “I’ll break the harpoon out, you head up on deck and man it.” He raises his eyebrows, but I cut him off before he begins. “And while you watch for its head to surface, I’m gonna run down to the brig and see if I can make any trouble through the hole it makes in the hull.”

Marco’s brow furrows. “You’re going to the brig.”

“Yeah.”

“… Where the water’s gonna be rushing in, and where the ship’s gonna fall apart first.”

“Thanks for reminding me.”

“Jean,” he sighs, catching my hand worriedly. “I don’t know about this.”

I turn his hand over in mine, running my thumbs over his palm and tracing his broken lifeline. After a moment, I lean down and press a kiss against his palm, then give him my best courageous smile. “Its biggest weak point is gonna be down by the hole. If I wait until the brig fills up, I can swim out of the break and fuck its day up underwater.”

Marco’s lips part on an unspoken protest, his eyes searching mine, so I bring his palm back to my lips and keep his gaze.

“Try to hit it in the eye,” I say, trying to spice it up with a weak chuckle. 

Another long silence between us, before he murmurs, “I thought you wanted to harpoon it.”

“Nah,” I reply, slouching back into my chair and spreading my legs obnoxiously under the table, bumping his knee with mine. “You know my aim. I’d miss it by a mile. I’m better with hand to hand.”

“Mano-a-tentacle?”

I bark laughter, twining our fingers tightly. “You got it, babe.”

He chuckles too, giving me a bemused smile, before he leans in for a kiss, which I gladly give him, whispering love against his lips. I sit back again to check out the window, noting with some chagrin that the rain has picked up significantly, the river choppy in the downpour. Also, there are some flashes in the southern distance I really don’t think I’m okay with. Swear to god, if this thing brings a typhoon with it, I’m gonna be salty. At least wait until I’ve gotten my damn food.

It doesn’t.

I’ve just turned my head to ask Marco something stupid when a flash of lightning lights the cabin absurdly bright, followed by a crack of thunder, but neither are pressing enough to disguise the way the ship heaves on a monstrous swell, nor the way the hull cracks _deafeningly_ under the kraken’s strike.

I move without thinking.

Marco sheds his coat and knocks his cane aside as he moves after me. I’m quicker, lighter on my feet, and I wrap my cloth napkin around my elbow and break the display glass like it’s nothing. Marco was right, the thing’s old as fuck, and rusty in places, but it’ll have to do.

The ship heaves again as I rip the spear off its display and sprint back over to him, pressing the rough metal into his hands and kissing him almost desperately.

“No matter what,” I rasp, barely audible over the sounds of people screaming as they sprint by us. He lifts the pointy end of the harpoon toward the ceiling and pulls me against him, kissing me again. Speaking against his soft, warm lips, my voice shaking, I say, “No matter what, Marco, I love you.”

“I love you, Jean,” he murmurs, and he kisses me again before he makes for the stanchioned-off stairs up to the deck.

Time’s up.

People are running, shouting for each other, some still sitting shell-shocked at their tables and staring hard at me as I make my way against the flow of panic. Kitchen’s back here, along with the stairs to the bottom of the ship, I remember. My mouth is dry, my hands shaking until they wrap around the hilt of my knife, stuffed under my shirt. As much as it soothes me, I’m still nervous.

My breath is quick. The lights all over the ship are flickering, and it _smells_ , like fucking salt and decay. The air _reeks_. The ship rocks like the goddamn _Titanic_ , the wood shrieking and pulsing with the creature’s insane strength.

When I skid to a halt in front of the short gate in the kitchen’s back corner, I stare down into the dim brig, and I can already see dark river water lapping up the stairs.

I panic.

My guts clench, my eyes widen, my body floods with ice, and suddenly I can’t breathe. I can’t _breathe._

I’m going to drown.

I slam backward against a steel counter, half due to the rocking of the ship, and look around desperately just so I don’t have to stare down at my death. There’s a huge, bald chef crouched in the corner, his hands quaking as he smokes a cigarette and stares at me.

My mouth flaps open and closed, cracked sounds coming out as my eyes widen in terror, and rather than say anything to me, he tosses me his pack. Thank god he can translate whatever beached-fish language I was fucking speaking. I shakily light one and suck down about half the damn thing, my own hands trembling something fierce, and my eyes slide closed as the nicotine rushes my brain.

Breathing in smoke instead of salt does something to soothe me, whatever that may be.

Doesn’t mean I wanna fucking go down there.

I exhale shuddering smoke into the thick air and watch the water rise, hearing the lights snap broken as the pressure crushes them down there, rendering the water black and lifeless like—

Like—

No. No no, no, don’t go there. Not there.

I wheeze down the last of my cigarette and chuck it into the rising water, rake my hand through my hair, and look back at the cook.

He just swallows, then closes his eyes and buries his face in his hands.

The silent commiseration we’ve been sharing is the sort of attitude learned by the damned.

The ship _groans_ , jostling again, and the lights flicker violently before they all go out.

I have to go. I have to.

Taking a deep breath and maybe saying something akin to a prayer, I shove myself off the counter, vault over the low gate, and fall straight into the abyss.

There’s no movement, I notice, my eyes squinted against the foul river water clogging my vision. Shit’s _nasty_. Regardless, there’s _no movement_ , and that’s a big problem. Krakens are violent creatures, loud and clumsy, and it should be gutting the brig with its stupid, flailing arm as it drowns the ship.

And yet, the water around me is silent as the grave.

My stomach tenses with the nervous force to expel what air I’d pulled in. Wasteful, fuck. I haul myself vaguely upward and poke my head above the surface, grateful for the bare strip of air between the rising flood and the wooden ceiling. It’s enough that I don’t panic again. Enough room. I look around, my hand braced against the ceiling, and fruitlessly try to force my eyes to acclimate to the darkness as I gasp for air. It doesn’t work.

I can kind of see some light from where I imagine the hole to be, though, so I take a few deep breaths and prepare to gun it.

But I don’t. It’s too quiet.

Too quiet to be a kraken.

The surface of the black tide is turbulent, small waves licking between the walls, but the bubbles that crop up just in front of me are unmistakably out of place. 

A head emerges from their weak ripples. My eyes widen further.

Soaked, stringy hair. Cataract-pale eyes huge and sunken behind cracked glasses. Gaunt skin mottled and long-drowned.

The _whispers._

_‘His devil is long-caged.’_

I’m screaming. I can’t help it.

_‘He will come out roaring.’_

The water’s rising, pressing me against the ceiling, shoving my face against the wood and flooding my ears and bringing with it a _thousand more whispers_ , a thousand fucking voices filling my mind and wiping my brain and dragging me under they’re _dragging me under I’m going to drown, I’m going to **drown—**_

The head sinks back under the water, and claws fisted in my clothes yank me beneath the surface.

I’m going to drown.

_I can’t die here._

I flail wildly against the hands holding me under, lashing out ineffectively with my knife, until a flash of doomed brilliance has me desperately slicing open my forearm. Dead man’s blood clouds from the wound and the hands recoil with a shudder that vibrates the water around me like a pulse, and it’s fucking enough. It’s enough.

I kick violently toward the stairs, emerging with a ragged wheeze and grasping for the gate’s bars.

A hand catches me and drags me up out of the water.

Marco.

His pants are torn, I notice, and there’s a long gash across his bum thigh, probably from his own knife. It looks like he’d smeared his blood on the tip of the harpoon, which he’s holding like a damn polearm in one hand as the other hauls me to my feet and away from the creeping, pale fingers reaching out of the water.

“We need to leave,” I gasp, steadying myself against a counter. “We need to leave, this is bad.”

He turns to me, mouth open to reply, but his eyes flash _rage_ and he spears the harpoon past me. I hear the telltale sizzle of whatever unfortunate soul he just sent to limbo with his own dead man’s blood.

Marco’s anger isn’t something I’ll ever get used to. It sends a bolt of icy fear through my guts, even on top of the terror already curling my insides.

“Love,” I say, moving closer and patting one soaked hand against his cheek. He shakes his head and looks at me again. “Marco, we gotta go, c’mon—”

He swallows, and we both look back at the drowned corpses beginning to crawl up from the darkness, dripping ichor and _hissing_.

“Yeah, okay.”

He takes the harpoon with him, and we sprint with all damn haste off the ship, trying to move with its sinking spasms as we bolt. The plank’s splintered horribly by the time we hit the entrance, but the pier is almost level now, so I push him to jump first and follow quickly into the pounding rain.

We don’t stop running. Not even when I glance over my shoulder and watch the _King’s Pride_ sink into the depths. That’s about when I notice the dark shadow of another ship, monstrous and rotten, silhouetted against the lightning crashing violent across the sky.

My stomach churns.

\--

By the time we hit our apartment, Marco’s knee has to be killing him. Luckily, there’s a little bench in our shower for him, and he perches on it while I sit in his lap, wrap my arms and legs around him, and sob into his shoulder.

At first, I flinch away from the water.

This water is hot, though. It’s clear and controlled, and there’s nowhere for it to pool or collect here. 

Marco whispers these facts to me as he clutches me tightly to him and runs his fingers through my hair and tells me he loves me, and it’s only by virtue of his body heat and the scalding shower water that I eventually stop shaking.

After something like an hour, we dry off and move to the bedroom, where I stitch shut his thigh and rub his weird, sinus-clearing joint cream over his taxed knee. We might have to break out his crutches again after this.

He doesn’t let me feel guilty for it, and with his encouragement I fight off the guilt spirals on my own as I wrap a dry bandage around his thigh. After he glues the slice on my arm closed, we curl up under the blankets until a particular pattern of knocks at the door tells us that Levi’s letting himself in.

I’m too tired to even bitch him out. I’m just exhausted from the panic. This is fucking _awful._

I roll to face Levi when he strides into the room, though, peering out of the blanket burrito, and Marco nuzzles warmly into the nape of my neck and wraps his arms around me.

“What happened?”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I pull the blanket back over my head, and Levi knows me well enough to know when I’m using lame physical humor as a coping technique.

The bed sinks under his wiry little frame, and I let him slap my hands away from my face so he can rest his hand against my forehead and pull out what he needs.

I’m kind of surprised by his reaction, though.

After a few minutes, he freezes, his fingers twitching against my forehead, before he stands suddenly. I peer back out of the blankets, watching him glare out the window.

“Levi?”

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, then looks at me over his shoulder. “Ghost ship.”

I stare at him. Loudly.

“That is a far cry from krakens.”

He rolls his eyes, stuffing a cigarette between his lips. He doesn’t light it, though. So polite. “Come by tomorrow, I’ll have it figured out by then,” he spits, sounding weirdly… I don’t know. _Pissed._ Maybe he’s salty about being wrong. _I’m_ salty about him being wrong. I couldn’t have been less prepared if I’d tried. He turns on his heel, but before he leaves, he glances back at me. 

“Don’t tell Eren.”

My eyebrows shoot up, but he’s already gone.

That’s fucking random. After kind of dropping him ass-first into the world of the supernatural, we’d sworn to tell Eren about shit like this instead of doing our shady little dance around him. Let him onto the island of lost toys, or whatever the fuck we’re considering ourselves now. Still, Levi probably has his reasons. Not like I have to like them.

I roll onto my back and wiggle one arm under Marco’s neck, burying my face in his hair when he lays his head on my shoulder. “We have time,” I mumble. “Ship won’t sail until tomorrow night. Ghost rules, or some bullshit.”

“What d’you wanna do?” I blink as he asks, his voice quiet and kind of rough, but I catch his drift.

He already knows that I’m pissing myself at the mere idea of falling asleep. I’m so fucking tired, but if I fall asleep… I shiver, and he folds himself tighter around me and murmurs soothingly.

“I don’t know,” I reply finally, digging the heel of my hand into my damp eye. “I just.”

He looks up at me.

“I just don’t fucking know.”


	2. The Drowned Fleet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The night is always darkest before the dawn, I suppose, but as the nights grow colder, the days grow shorter too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)

“I thought we were done hiding shit from Eren,” I grouse, propping my boots up on Levi’s coffee table in a way I know drives him fucking crazy. I manage to hold my ground for about four seconds, matching his icy stare, before I lift them up so he can shove a coaster under my heel. I’m being spoiled, I can tell. Probably the closest I’ll get to an apology for the whole not-kraken thing.

Levi sits across from me, sipping a steaming mug of coffee in that bizarre way he does, and Marco sits primly on the couch beside me. He’s still not used to Levi, which I honestly think is kinda hilarious. “This is different,” Levi rumbles, interrupting my introspection. I raise my eyebrows, and he continues, “Eren cannot know about this.”

“… Why?”

With a sigh, Levi sets his mug down and lights a cigarette. “You know about his parents?”

I stare at the ceiling, trying to remember the details. Yeah, I’m familiar with Grisha and Carla Jaeger. Grisha was an international businessman who went missing when Eren was a kid, presumably foul play. It was only a year or so after he’d brought Mikasa home from a trip in Japan. 

Carla Jaeger managed to keep the family afloat for a few years, but a house fire when Eren was around ten put an abrupt stop to that. It would’ve put a stop to Eren and Mikasa too, but for the fireman that pulled them out of a closet. Then, through a long series of extremely falsified legal documents, custody of the orphans fell to a trusted associate. 

Levi was only sixteen at the time. Not that the judge he’d persuaded to make the call knew that. Saved Eren and Mikasa from a life of foster care, which is notoriously horrifying around these parts. 

_Why_ he bothered with these two kids he’d never met, I have no idea, but I trust Levi to know what he’s doing when he pulls these stunts. I mean, shit, I’m still not entirely sure why he picked me up from the morgue that same year, but I haven’t quite grown the balls to question it. Either way, he’s like the world’s worst fairy godmother. Or best. Take your pick.

Shaking my head clear, I look back over at Levi and run a hand through my hair. “What about them? They’ve been out of the picture for like twenty years.”

Levi stares down into his coffee, then flicks his gaze back up to me. 

“The spirit you saw on the _King’s Pride_ is Grisha Jaeger.”

… Oh.

I sit up slowly, bring my feet back to solid ground, and stare widely at Levi.

“What.”

He shoves some papers toward me across the table. “He was a businessman, but not in the traditional sense. Seems like he’s back to old habits.”

I nod slowly, looking over the papers. Printed up lore, some photocopies of Grisha Jaeger’s apparently multitudinous identities, the like. The paper about ghost fleets tells me that sinners who die at sea are doomed to wander the ocean forever in search of redemption, which will always elude them unless they make some effort to atone for their wrongdoing. If enough of them gather, they can possess the spirit of a ship and become a sort of dead crew, but only if the spirit is incredibly powerful. 

If they manage it, though, the flagship can recruit other ships. Usually violently. That does explain why all these antique ships are sinking into their harbors.

(I remember now. I read in a book once that the last time this happened, the mothership in question was the _Titanic_ herself. Also, she’s still unaccounted for. So that’s fun.)

Scratching my head, I spread out the papers and squint, then look over at Marco. He’s reading over a press release on a shipment that never arrived at the National Maritime Museum dated some thirty years ago, apparently half a million dollars’ worth of an exhibit on Phoenician pirates. 

I’m kinda starting to put things together.

“Wait, waitwait,” I start, looking back up at Levi. “So you’re telling me Eren’s dad was a _pirate_ , and now he’s a _ghost pirate_ , wandering the seas and stealing ships so that he can float around with _other ghost pirates.”_

Levi quirks an eyebrow to the affirmative, and I don’t really know whether to laugh or cry. I’m kind of leaning toward crying. Mostly because this means that not only did I have to live out my fucking nightmare, I am now probably going to have to live it _again_ due to the nature of the job at hand.

I shake my head and flop back into the couch. “So why the kraken thing? Why mimic the pattern?”

He shrugs, finishing his coffee. “Sailors love themes.”

With a loud groan, I scrub my hands down my face, then look over at Marco again. He’s earnestly devouring all the information at hand, scanning every piece of evidence we’ve been given, and it soothes me to watch him so I do. He’s definitely more about the details than I am. Me, I just wanna know what it looks like, what it smells like, and how to kill it. 

The lackadaisical approach has absolutely gotten me in trouble in the past. Having Marco around is probably why my face is actually presentable most of the time lately.

When we leave, Marco takes the papers with him, tucking them safely under his hoodie to protect them from the pouring rain. I grimace and flip my hood up, and we make the quick trip home in a cab Levi had called for us.

“So,” Marco says once we’re safely in our apartment, dropping the papers onto our own coffee table. “What d’you think?”

I collapse onto the couch and pull him down into my lap so I can bury my face in his damp shoulder. “I think this job sucks.”

He laughs softly, wiggling out of his hoodie before he shifts to lay across the couch, his head in my lap. “Other than that.”

Yawning widely, I kick my boots up onto the coffee table and play with his soaked bangs. “Not much to think. I saw the flagship when the _Pride_ went down, so at least we know what it looks like. Connie and Sasha’ll drive north and take care of it at the next port.” Marco lets out a deep breath, probably grateful that we don’t have to deal with both ships. I know I am. One’s bad enough.

“Do we have a plan?”

“I guess,” I mumble, rubbing the back of my neck. “Climb on board and kick some ass.” He rolls his eyes, smiling slightly. “I mean, spirit uprisings like this happen all the time. This one’s just a lot wetter and more expensive than others. We’ll put as many of them to rest as we can, take out the captain, and hopefully the Braus-Springers stop the flagship, because that’s where all the spirits are coming from. Thing’s like a fucking funnel.”

He’s silent for a while, then sighs quietly, reaching up to catch my hand so he can lace our fingers together. “We have to make sure to put Eren’s father to rest.”

Of course.

I grunt and run my free fingers through Marco’s hair, unable to even fake enthusiasm. 

It’s not bothersome, Marco’s immense level of humanity. He’s always been this way. Shit, it’s why he became a priest to begin with; to help people, in addition to paying up for the life he took. Plus, on some level I agree with him. Eren’s been something like my friend for most of the last ten years, on and off again. Even if we’re playing keep-away with the bad news about Daddy Deadest, it’s the least I can do to put his ass to some form of rest. Limbo’s better than seafaring for eternity. Well, for most people. Mine’s not great.

It’s not even the fact that I might have to go out of my way to search the ship for Pops, even if that’s plausibly annoying.

What bothers me is more the fact that Grisha’s been drowning me for what feels like a year, and he very nearly succeeded this last time. It was bad enough when I didn’t have a face to match to that ghastly voice. Dude’s not a fucking looker, and not someone I want to have to make close eye contact with again. But I probably have to. Unless I sneak up on him, I have to look that asshole in the face, and that just is not an exciting prospect.

“Did he say anything to you?” Marco’s voice pulls me out of my head, and I blink and make a questioning noise. “Eren’s dad. Grisha. Levi said you saw him, did he say something to you?”

As Grisha’s drowned whispers bubble to the surface again, chills break out across my skin. It doesn’t make sense. Why did he have to haunt _me_ of all people? Eren’s been resoundingly normal lately, and he doesn’t have a psychic bone in his body, so I really doubt he’s having dreams about his father sending him to a watery grave too. I never even _met_ this asshole, and now he’s fucking haunting me like he’s getting paid for it, whispering to me as he does.

My brow furrows. Something, something… salvation eludes them unless they attempt to atone for their sins. What sins? Being a damn pirate? What does drowning me as he warns me about Marco’s unfortunate history have to do with Grisha’s damn sticky fingers?

I guess I could always just. Ask him. Goody.

“Jean?”

Marco peers worriedly up at me, so I shake my head and lean down for a kiss.

“Let’s go sink some ships.”

\--

For the first day, a ghost ship lies at the bottom of whatever water she sunk in, which works out in our favor. We get to face the _Pride_ well-rested, and she hasn’t gone far downriver when we catch up to her. Just a few miles south to the industrial shipyards, floating menacingly through pitch-black waters and sending out pulsing waves as she goes that fuck with everything electrical in a two-hundred-yard radius. Lights aboard scrubby-looking ocean liners and oil tankers flicker and fizzle in the light rain, and lightning flashes in the distance to backlight the torn sails and twisting figurehead of the now-damned ship. 

We sneak through the shipyard, keeping low until we hit an open receiving pier, which creaks and groans as we sprint down it. There’s no one around, thank god.

The shipping strait is narrow enough that when we crouch at the end of the pier, we can see the smoke-like rigging laced across the rotten woodwork, and we can hear the grumbling and groaning of the dead workers on deck as the ship approaches.

I turn to Marco, gesturing the plan just for confirmation, and he nods.

We’re wearing torn, bloody clothes from old jobs that reek to high fucking heaven. Stank is one of the many downsides to the lifestyle. The only way to bridge the gap between the human world and the spirit world, though, is with dead man’s blood. Luckily, Marco and I are factories for the shit, given that we each have one foot out the door. This line of work tends to get messy, so we save what we can to avoid having to play ‘blood-bank doctor’ when we need to get physical with the spirit world. With cloth stained with our blood, and with a fine slicking of it across our palms and our shoes, we can board the ship. Disgusting, I know.

With a steadying breath, I back up a good bit along the pier, and I start sprinting before I can think about the long, bad day I’m about to fucking cannonball into.

I jump off the edge of the pier and grab hold of a frayed, rank-smelling fishing net near the front, my hands grasping the frozen spirit of the ship, and so it begins.

Ripping a line out of the decaying net, I toss it to Marco, and he climbs up it like a damn three-legged monkey. When he comes level with me, I lean in to kiss his cheek, and we’re off. God knows when I’ll see him again. Such is the way of things.

I haul myself up onto deck and come face to face with the first guy, snarling and missing a good chunk of his face, but I’ve seen fucking worse. I whip my knife out, slick blood spraying out of the sheath in the wake of my blade, and I slit what remains of his throat. He filters into ashes in near silence, not like it matters. The rest of the deck crew is already coming at me.

Marco, wielding a bloody knife of his own, butts in and cuts a brutal path through the drowned corpses charging this way, the ship creaking and groaning her sympathy under us, and I trust him to make an effective distraction while I sprint across the deck in search of the captain. We need them most of all. After all, a captain always goes down with their ship, and when the ship is brought back from her riverbed rest, the proverb flips. If you wanna sink a ghost ship, you gotta sink her captain.

I’d seen the captain’s chambers on a decoratively-framed blueprint when we were onboard last night. They’re hidden at the ass end of the ship, for whatever reason, but it’s not like a long damn hallway will kill me. Unless, of course, the ship’s started rearranging herself. Death twists the structure of a vessel. It’s early yet, though, and she still seems mostly intact. 

The door to the main cabin is blocked by some undead beefcake with a cannonball hole through his guts, burnt-flesh smoke still wafting effervescent from the chasm. My heart skips a beat, but now’s not the time. No time for guilt. He growls at me, so I snort at him and grip my knife tighter. I’m way faster than this guy. Probably because of the double-pegleg. Whatever, I’ll take what I can get.

I jump at him, kick out one of his wobbly trunks, and swing my knife up to meet his falling face, and he takes his roasted pig smell with him as he dissolves into warm embers. Before his crewmates notice where I’m heading, I slip into the cabin and immediately pull in a frozen breath.

Intact, maybe. Who knows. What I do know is that it is fucking _dark._

Even the flickering lights have given out here. She apparently hasn’t picked up any will-o’-the-wisps yet. No wisps means no lantern light, either. Can’t light spirit lamps with real fire.

I pause to let my eyes adjust to the pitch, careful with my breaths and straining to hear over the _Pride_ ’s ghastly wails. She _sounds_ like a damn ghost ship. Every board has taken on a voice of its own, crying out in protest of once again being turned to piracy, this time for good. Until I liberate her, anyway. I wonder if ships get spirit doors too.

Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath, and when I open them again, it’s a little brighter. Still empty. Nothing moves in the shadows. I’m alone here.

I shudder. I can’t help it.

The lush carpeting has given way to holey, rotten planks, every solid door now misshapen and badly fitted, some swinging open soundlessly in the swaying of the ship. The walls are torn, the few portholes smashed, the weakest moonlight filtering through the shards in a vain attempt to guide my way. Far too late in the moon for that. 

Captain’s quarters should be down the wide stairs in front of me, across the long cannon hold, and up another, smaller set of stairs. Don’t have to go anywhere near the kitchen, nor the brig. Lucky.

If it looks dark up here, though, my god. I peek down the stairs and find a sort of vast, looming nothingness. My universe for a flashlight. Like it’d do any good.

A deathly sort of mist rolls over my bloody boots, and under the creaks and moans I’m now acutely aware of whispers in the dark, coming from down below. No more stalling. I take another slow, deep breath, steadying myself as best I possibly can, and make my way down into the dark.

While I guess I shouldn’t be that fucking surprised, I’m still not pleased to find a good six inches of water flooding the hold, the pool still as the night and obscured in parts by that same fine, cloudy mist. Good thing my damn socks are bloody too. I rub my sweaty forehead against my sleeve, then step the rest of the way into the water and press forward. Gotta be brave. 

The water mutes the ship’s cries down here. It’s eerily silent but for the ragged breaths that pass over the nape of my neck, trying to fuck with me. Possibly succeeding. My steps splash obnoxiously in the quiet and echo feebly through the entire hold. I’d hoped for surprise, but if they don’t know we’re here by now I’d be shocked. Marco’s probably run through half of the crew by now. 

Marco.

I have to keep it together. He held me last night, but if I know him at all, he’s gonna need the same more than I will once we’re done here.

Just gotta keep it together.

_‘God forgive us—’_

Ill-timed whispers, whipping past my ear like the buzzing of a damn fly. I jolt, my breath fogging out thick in the still air, and the weak moonlight glints off the tiny, choppy waves I stir up with every step. 

This is where we’d been just last night, all candlelight and fine dining, but the welcoming shimmer is gone now. All the furniture, all the wine and decorations and treasures. Gutted and dilapidated and sinking eternally from the inside, the _King’s Pride_ is taking on her new form in something approaching horrifying glory. 

I hear something echoing my footsteps behind me, but I don’t dare look back. I just slosh a little faster, and somehow the frigid silence presses thicker around my ears, against my eyes, filtering into my throat and filling my lungs like water.

My breath shakes. Keep it together.

I come to the end of the hall and push open the splintered door to the captain’s dining area, the wood stirring tiny, inky whirlpools as it moves through the water, and make my way through the clutter here. It’s the only part that hasn’t been gutted, but I know better than to take anything from this damned place. Just gotta find the captain, send them to rest, and the ship should go with them. That’ll leave me and Marco… well, in the river, honestly. We can swim.

The door closes quietly behind me, sealing me in, but I’m already headed for the stairs toward the back, the ones that lead up to the chambers. The faster I get this over with, the better.

My boots slide on the threadbare carpeting as I ascend, knife held firm in my sticky hand, and just as I’m reaching for the door handle, a voice calls out from inside.

_‘Jean Kirschtein.’_

I pause. Lovely.

Guess I don’t have surprise _or_ fortune on my side.

Straightening out of my Gollum-esque crouch, I tuck my blade up where it’s not quite so apparent and push the door open.

The captain’s home, it seems, and it’s none other than my _favorite_ haunting bastard. I frown and move inside, every muscle tense and twitching, and just as the door slams shut behind me, a few lanterns ignite in a whistling sort of _ffsh_ and shed a mute purple light on the scene. I guess she did pick up some wisps after all. They’re behaving in their little glass prisons. For now.

Grisha Jaeger turns to me from where he’s staring out the crushed windows, torn curtains flapping in an invisible breeze, and I stare at his shoulder. Fuck that face. 

“You know why I’m here,” I spit, my teeth gritted around every word. “Just play nice.”

“Let me try to explain,” he fucking _gurgles_ , his voice choked and bubbly, and as he speaks, water spills down his bloody shirt. Probably from his mouth and his nose. Drowning is disgusting.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” I snort, whipping my blade back out in front of me. His chest is riddled with soggy, blackened bullet holes. “Atone for your sins, blah blah.”

He sighs, water and blood mixing muddy down his shirt, before his hands lace behind his back. “If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also.”

“No time for riddles, old man.” I steel myself and stare into his drowned face, his horrible pale eyes leaking water too. It’s just coming from everywhere, dripping over his clothes and onto the floor and the desk, _everywhere_. So goddamn much of it.

“You heard my warnings.”

“No shit.”

“Yet you did nothing.”

I throw my hands up in the air. Dude’s pissing me off. “Look, _parlay_ or sanctuary or whatever,” I grouse, sheathing my blade and crossing my arms. “What the _fuck_ did you want me to do about it? Just fuckin’ reach into Marco’s chest and pull the devil out of him?”

“Marco?” Grisha furrows his brow, his dead skin pulling tight across his skull. “I spoke of my son, Eren.”

My stomach drops. It takes the rest of the world with it.

Of fucking course. That makes more sense. Doesn’t fucking mean I wanna hear it.

“Excuse me?”

With another heavy sigh, Grisha sinks into his fancy captain’s chair and gestures to the one on the other side of his desk. It looks solid enough, so I sink carefully into it. Making conversation isn’t generally my style with this kind of thing, but it’s best to not irritate him, even if the only emotion he’s shown so far is grief. Plus, he’s got information I need. Asshole.

“The evil I spoke of lies within Eren. I set him down the path to damnation and left no clues to turn him toward the light.” He stares down at his hands, swollen palms catching the water his words bubble out in, clouded dark with decay. “I know I am damned to these seas for eternity for what I have done to him.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

Grisha pauses, collecting himself and his words, before he slumps back into his chair.

“I abandoned him. I placed in him a great darkness, and for that I have suffered tremendously. I will continue to do so.” He looks up at me again, and I shudder involuntarily. “I called you here to warn you, Jean Kirschtein.”

I bite my tongue against a thousand snarks and even more insults, still trying to wring information out of him while I can. I can’t bring myself to be polite, though, so I just huff, “About what?”

“He will come out roaring.” Ugh. The dead are so fucking dramatic. Grisha stands then, turning to look out the window again, and blood begins to spill down his back from the exit wounds. He’s getting worked up. I’m running out of time. “He will succumb to the virus I gave him, and in time he will destroy everything.”

“Vi—whoa, whoa,” I splutter, standing quickly, hoping against hope he’s just being fucking dramatic again. “You _infected_ him with something?”

“We didn’t know what it was,” he says, his voice shaking terribly. “It was the last living sample, and they were coming for me. Quickly. I just—I didn’t know what to do, but I knew Eren could handle it. He would do the right thing.”

Disgust coils in my gut. “He was _eight.”_

 _“I know!”_ The lanterns explode in a tinkling shower of glass, and the wisps shudder out of existence, terrified away by the booming, _deafening_ volume of Grisha’s voice. I’m trembling despite myself, my hand wrapped tight around my knife, ready at a moment’s notice, but the silence creeps between us again as Grisha attempts to calm himself. “I know. And for this sin, I suffer.” I keep my opinion to myself.

He reaches up and pulls something from around his neck, a worn leather strand with a long brass key hanging from it, and as he turns, he tosses it to me. I catch it by the key, which I regret immensely as soon as the fucking thing _stabs_ me, some dark force slicing clear across my palm and drawing blood. Hissing, I drop the damn thing and rip my knife back out.

“Don’t touch the metal,” he says just a fucking _tad_ bit too late, and I roll my eyes at him loudly as I wipe my blood on my already-stained clothes. “It’s cursed, but it will keep Eren contained.”

“And what, exactly, do you want me to do with this thing?” I bend and nudge the tip of my knife under the leather, then lift the key somewhat safely, letting it dangle between us. “Just fuckin’ drop it on his head and let it stab him in the chest for the rest of his days?”

“It won’t hurt him.” I squint, and Grisha casts his drowned gaze to the desk. “Not after the devil emerges.”

“You’re not helping me much,” I growl, yanking an old, stained handkerchief out of my pocket and wrapping the key in it. “When’s this gonna happen? How will I know? And you just want me to fucking hold onto this until he pops? This is _your_ fuckup, old man.”

He glares at me, but he knows I’m right. He’s hiring a kid to clean up his damn mess, and I’ve unfortunately got no choice in the matter, because—“Those drowned in the ocean’s salt cannot walk on land.” Words straight out of my mouth, give or take. “You will know when the time comes. He will not be contained.”

Dandy. “Still not helpful.” I grip the wrapped key in my free hand, watching Grisha sink into his chair again with a sneer. Yeah, I’m disdaining him. Pirate dad of the year right here, Mr. ‘I don’t know what this does, so I’d better fucking stuff it into my eight-year-old son.’ He doesn’t speak again, maddeningly choosing to just pout at his stupid desk instead of giving me _some_ kind of clue. 

After the undeserved courtesy pause, I roll my eyes again and declare him a lost cause. It’s not often spirits fess up to what they’ve done, but I really really wish Grisha would’ve fucking broken the mold on this one. Since he’s outlived his usefulness, though… “I can’t let you sail, you know. You’re dangerous.”

“I know.”

I stuff the key deep in my pocket and come around behind him, close to my exit window, readying the blood-tinged point of my blade at the mottled base of his skull.

“Say goodnight, old man.”

He deflates and buries his face in his hands, whispering into his palms over and over.

_“God forgive us.”_

\--

The ship _screams_ as she sinks into the shipping strait’s depths, and Marco and I watch from land, fucking drenched and shivering. He’d bailed as soon as Grisha’s hold on the ship ceased to keep her afloat, and we’d both doggy-paddled through the frozen muck to the nearest pier. Gonna need another hour-long shower. We’re both shaking, but Marco even more so, so I twine my fingers with his and I don’t let go until we get home.

Just as he’d held me as I shook last night, I hold him tonight, and he doesn’t cry anywhere near as loud as I did. That’s almost worse somehow. I’m about to call Levi to pull some shit with his memory when Marco finally snaps out of it, exhausted and emotional. At least he’s fucking _here_ , though, and responding quietly to my attempts to comfort him.

This is the part he can’t ever get used to. The spirits of human beings. Confused, damned, angry and sad and alone, all unbearably painful to him because he’s reminded so harshly of certain parts of our recent history that both of us are still struggling to get over.

It’s a thing we never should’ve had to live through, and it’s one we’re still recovering from. It’s hard to recover from being ghosts, though, immaterial and helpless as we’re buried under the weight of the darkness beyond death. 

I get panicky, flailing desperately to keep my head above the surface of that horrible knowledge. 

He sinks into it.

We manage, though. We live. We help each other and ourselves, and we’re getting better at it as time goes by. 

On nights like tonight, though, we still have to take the NyQuil shit. It’s for the better.

\--

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Levi quite this furious before.

I can tell how angry he is by how little his face moves, and right now he’s as blank a slate as one of Michelangelo’s trapped angels. It’s more than mildly frightening. He stares down at Papa Jaeger’s key, completely silent as we wait for Hanji to get here. 

We can’t take it to them like we did with the stupid book so long ago. The key needs to stay as close to Eren as possible at all times, given that we have no fucking clue when he’s gonna erupt, nor what he’ll erupt into. Hopefully he won’t notice that we’re going full homeland security mode, keeping at least one member of our happy little crew up his ass at all times.

Still, we need Hanji to look at the key, tell us about it, do experiments on it, so they’re calling in a few incredibly sketchy favors at the local university. I’m surprised, honestly. Getting Hanji to leave their lab is a real struggle at the best of times.

This key, though. They’re so excited about this damn thing, they’re making Moblit drive up here at ass-o’clock in the morning. Poor fuck.

Some part of me wants to ask what we should do about Eren. Other than babysitting. We can’t tell him what’s going on, I know that much. Somehow, some way, Eren would feel guilty. Angry. Sad, lonely, scared, and even if he wasn’t a ticking time-bomb, none of those are things any of us want to inflict upon Eren. He’s the last of us that’s anything even approaching normal, for whatever that’s worth. 

On the flipside, if we _don’t_ tell him… well, who fucking knows. We don’t know shit about _shit_ , and now that I really think about it, Grisha was so unhelpful it’s almost dizzying.

Hanji bursts into Levi’s living room and startles the bejeezus out of all of us as they pull thick rubber gloves on, obviously happier to see the key than any of our miserable asses. Moblit trails after them, fidgeting and looking stressed out. Same as always, then. 

“Oh, hello,” Hanji chirps at the key, holding it up at arm’s length by the strand. They’re almost _vibrating_ with excitement. Levi’s already filled them in, so I’m hoping to not have to answer any questions about it. I’m already tired of the damn thing. They turn to Moblit, who’s armed with his chewed-on pen and teeny notebook, and start babbling in a variety of fun and dead languages. 

While they’re performing their initial breakdown of the thing, as is normal with cursed items, I find myself spacing out something fierce. 

I’m so goddamn tired.

This life is killing me. Sometimes literally.

Marco seems to sense my exhaustion, though, and twines his fingers between mine. Solidarity is a nice feeling. I squeeze his fingers and flash him half a smile, then look back up at Levi, whose own hands are fisted beside him where he’s sitting stiffly in his chair.

Maybe now isn’t the best time to ask, but given the sudden supernatural uproar around Eren, I’m really starting to wonder.

“Hey, Levi,” I mumble, staring into his flat grey eyes. “Who called you to get Eren? Grisha?” I have a hundred and one contentious conspiracy theories about why this asshole would infect his son and then have him pulled from a fire, but I’m keeping them to myself for now. Levi shakes his head, though.

“Carla.”

Huh. I raise my eyebrows. “What’d she say?”

“They only ever say one word,” he replies, looking down at his nails. “She picked _‘safe.’”_

My brow furrows.

That makes sense, given that Carla was freshly dead and likely hanging around to ensure the safety of her children. I’m still full of plots and theories, though, and I’m unwilling to rule out the possibility that Grisha was planning something, even with all his stupid warnings, all the whining about eternal suffering. Not like it would matter now either way, since I kicked the jerk off this plane. All we have to do is stop Eren before whatever’s coming snowballs. I think I’m just harboring a bad taste in my mouth from Grisha’s transgression.

All my shade-throwing aside, this information about Eren’s rescue doesn’t entirely satisfy me. The can of worms is barely open. What I’m curious about now is my own case. 

Who called to Levi? My mother didn’t die until six years after I did, and my dad’s still alive.

I guess Levi’s picking my brain, because he stands suddenly and lights a cigarette, heading into his small kitchen to make more coffee. I can’t resist. I follow.

Marco lets me go. I think he’s catching the drift of this conversation.

Levi and I stand in the silence of his kitchen, me huffing down his second-hand smoke while he sets up the coffeemaker. It’s not until the thing is burping steam in his face, the vapor dampening the paper of his cigarette and curling the ends of his bangs that he looks up at me and confirms my suspicions.

“You said _‘help.’”_

My gaze falls to the floor. 

I’d forgotten everything about how close I came to being devoured as a lost little spirit before Christa put me back. Years and years I’d lived without that knowledge until I’d been forced to relive it. The way Melinoë ripped apart the hospital’s halls in her attempt to get to me, to my soul, a suitably broken vessel in which to satisfy her ancient megalomania. The way she’d laughed, crackling and echoing hot with the burning hellfire from whence she’d come, torn apart by her untimely emergence into this world.

I’d forgotten how loudly I’d screamed when I thought she was going to devour me and Christa both. The psychic bat signal from the other side, the thing Levi takes to the face like a spirit haymaker. The thing that keeps him up at night.

Aching, cavernous guilt seeps through me again, an invisible hand crushing my fragile ribs, the discomfort traveling through my chest and up to my weak lips, which shake under the pressure.

Guilt for Levi, for cramming myself into his skull in my shrieking desperation. Guilt for Christa, who likely had to die to come save me.

Guilt for Marco, who became that vile wretch’s next target after she couldn’t take me.

The resounding whispers of _mine, mine, mine_ that refused to be defeated and instead found another shattered soul.

“Stop.”

I jolt at Levi’s voice, startling out of the guilt spiral starting to build dark and dangerous over me. He flicks ashes into the sink and stares at me, exhausted and angry. 

“There was nothing you could have done. Guilt is a useless emotion. Stop letting it rule you.”

He fills two mugs and leaves me to my breathing exercises in the still of his kitchen, accompanied only by the smell of coffee and the sound of the rain pattering against his window. I stay there, trying as hard as I can to heed his advice. It’s not going well.

Marco comes up behind me with a soft murmur of my name, knowing better than to sneak up on me, and he’s just as gentle with his voice as he is with the way he winds his arms around my waist and buries his face in my shoulder. Solidarity.

“Did you forget?” he asks quietly, his chest warm and soothing against my back.

“Only for a second,” I mumble, resting my hands over his and closing my eyes.

“So you remember now, right?”

I nod, reciting some of the words I learned in therapy, that he’s been helping me hammer into my circuitry. “Some things that happened to me aren’t my fault.”

“And?”

With a shaky sigh, I relax against him, and the tight tugging in my lungs eases in his warmth, allowing me to think straight. “It’s okay to feel shitty about them, but guilt won’t let me put them behind me.”

“Right.” He turns me around slowly, pressing his lips to my forehead. “You don’t have to carry the world alone, Jean. You have friends, family.” He tilts my chin up so I’m looking him in the eye, his gaze open and honest, gentle understanding flowing from him into me and soothing me further. “It’s okay to need help.”

I swallow the tears that threaten to rise up from my guts, choosing instead to bury my face in his shoulder and clutch weakly at his sweater.

I’m so fucking tired.

When I speak, my words are feeble, cracked, but he hears them.

“I need help.”

He kisses my temple.

“Okay.”

\--

Eren’s used to being close to his friends, so it’s not terribly suspicious that we’re all hanging out with him. It’s just a matter of not watching too closely, not staring at him like he’s about to hatch. I invite him over for dinner, Armin sleeps over, Mikasa sprawls her work across his kitchen table, and Levi crashes. Between all of us, we’re solid.

I hate the waiting game.

Hanji lurks at the chemistry building on campus, stuffed in an old basement lab where there are less questions to be asked, so I see Moblit on campus a lot. Usually with three or four cups of coffee and a pretty solid twitch in his left eye. The Hanji Effect in a nutshell.

We don’t speak to each other beyond a nod in passing for the better part of a week, until one day he catches my elbow and asks if I have the time.

Alrighty. 

When I follow him into Hanji’s dimly-lit base camp, I’m overcome with this sort of weird pity for Moblit. He’s gonna have to clean this shit up. And find a way to dispose of the blood. I think that’s blood. I _hope_ that’s blood.

I would offer to help, since I’m _really_ good at cleaning blood off of shit by now, but I’m still not Moblit’s biggest fan. He got incredibly stuck on my bad side with his apparent lack of empathy for Marco’s situation back then. I mean, he’s slowly working his way out of my glare corner, but it’s a process.

Anyway, Hanji’s grinning at me from where they’re perched on a scuffed lab bench, a smear of what looks like charcoal across their cheek and a pretty distinct crazy eye. They’ve got most of their long, greying hair stuffed up into a messy ‘lab work’ bun, but loose strands still stick out everywhere the way they do when Hanji sleeps on their desk. Hard at work, I see. I stuff my hands in my pockets and wander closer, keeping a wary eye on the key hanging from a hook on the wall, shining innocuously above a messy pile of scrawled notes. 

“You look pleased,” I mutter. I’m about to continue, but I forget what I was going for when I see two big wooden bowls full of what I’m starting to suspect might actually be bile, now that I smell it. Each has a thick leather strap floating in it, soaking up the foul shit.

Hanji laughs at my grimace, hopping off the counter and clapping their filthy hands. I frown noisily.

“I backwards-derived the curse on the key!” 

My eyebrows shoot up. “Y-you didn’t remove it, did you?”

They wrinkle their nose, clearly offended. There’s no way Hanji would ever be so careless, but I have to check. For my own sanity. “Of _course_ not. I just figured out how it works and fiddled with it.” They gesture to the bowls proudly. “It was actually pretty simple! Sugar, spice, and everything digestive.” 

Oh. Ohhh, _sick_. I gag and allow myself a moment to revel in that knowledge, then peer back at them. “So you, uh. Are you making more?”

Their toothy grin widens as they lean closer, eyebrows waggling. Oh, this _must_ be good. “I am making more.”

“Because…?”

Spinning away from me, Hanji slinks over to their papers, pulling out a few hopefully-cleanish pages to hand me. Probably to give to Levi. They know me by now, I’m not reading this shit. “As you know, the curse is meant to contain something. Some kind of inner evil that’s distinct from the host in some way. In the case of the key, I couldn’t tell exactly what, so I’m afraid we’re not much better off on the Eren front.” I cram the notes they pass me into my bag between some reports I have to grade, only sparing them half a second’s glance extra when my eye catches the word _‘lykos.’_ Greek. Fuck that.

“ _But_ , I did some research,” they continue, crossing their arms over their thin chest. “And a few experiments. _And_ a tiny bit of witchcraft.”

Oh. Great. My eyes shutter closed, silently begging for patience.

Hanji did curse craft in the basement of a building on the campus _I work at._

I have to start bringing a gris-gris bag to school. 

Witchcraft is fucking messy work at times, and given the wide variety of richly _organic_ smells I’m currently bathing in, Hanji appears to have done the very messiest kind. They’re meticulous, to be sure, but sometimes there’s no telling what’s happening under the spell you’re working. Good fucking lord.

“Yeah, yeah,” they mumble, scratching at the black dust on their cheek. “It’s under control. I have an excellent track record with this kind of magic. Itty bitty percent error, you know!”

“Goody.” I run my hands down my face, laughing slightly. Hanji’s always amused me on some level, aside from leaving me terrified or disgusted. On rare occasions, all three. “So what’d you find?”

“Well, I have old news, bad news, and good news.” I floppily gesture for them to continue. “The old news is, the curse only works if the parasite has already been active at least once, and if the host is aware of its existence. The bad news is, whatever it is also has to have drawn fresh blood for this to work.”

Sighing slowly, I squeeze the bridge of my nose. Fucking super. So we have to wait for Eren’s bad side to crush a fucking small animal, at the very best. “And the good news?”

Grinning again, Hanji holds up their finger and says, “For a curse, it’s _very_ flexible.”

They point across the lab, to a huge cage housing a few—god, are those fucking _gophers?_ Gophers. That explains some of the other smells I’m smelling, as well as the scratching sounds. I’m used to those kinds of noises around Hanji. I raise my eyebrows and move over to the cage, and Hanji trickles after me, a distinct bounce in their step indicating some resounding success.

Three gophers plod around the cage, clearly disturbed by the lack of sufficiently tunnel-able landscape, grinding their teeth and sniffing. They all have tags through their stubby ears, one white, one red, and one green. White Tag has a thick bandage wrapped around its fat haunch and a clear limp. Other than that, they’re not terribly different. Three tubby brown blobs waddling around a cage that could fit me in it if I just bend my knees a little.

“I’ve been running some experiments on lycanthropy for the last few months,” Hanji says, patting the top of the cage fondly. I consider that for a moment, lips pursed in thought, then stare over at them again when the implication slaps me like a dead fish.

“You made werewolf _gophers.”_

“Weregophers.”

I stare harder.

_Weregophers._

They smile broadly and continue. “Surprisingly, gophers mimic human lycanthropy much better than mice or rats, which I’ve always thought was weird, but whatever. They’re nice and big anyway. Easier to observe.” I rub the back of my neck idly, wondering what exactly a weregopher looks like before deciding that I don’t really want to know. Fucking goofy, at best.

Hanji bends over the cage and introduces them to me. “White tag is Thomas, and he’s as normal as they come. Regular, noncycling, unaltered gopher. Perhaps a little fluffier than average. Red tag is Sonny, who was turned by another weregopher’s bite. See the turn marks on his leg?” I lean in close, and yeah, I see the absurd little bald patches on his ass, pale bite scars trailing into jagged struggle marks. As they point to the last gopher, Hanji’s voice softens to a cautious whisper. “And green tag is Bean. He was turned by a viral infusion.”

My brow furrows. That… that gives me pause. 

Viral lycanthropy sounds like the last fucking thing the world needs. In the wrong hands… Hanji’s already looking me over when I glance at them out of the corner of my eye, knowing that I’m not gonna be happy about this information. They shake their head before I can start bitching and breathe, “No one knows but you. Not Levi, not Erwin. Not even Moblit.” Blinking, I peek over my shoulder at the taxed grad student, who appears to have passed out in a folding chair in the far corner. 

“You know me,” I reply quietly as I turn back to them, my grim seriousness clear in my tone. “I’m not letting that shit see the light of day.”

They nod, satisfied by the affirmation of their trust in me. Hanji knows I’d die before I see that bullshit weaponized. No matter what the stakes, no matter what the outcome. It’s not fucking worth it. Likewise, I know Hanji. The only reason they’d think to single out the genetic wolf and stuff it into a viral shell would be to try and find a cure, a retrovirus or a vaccine or something. If anyone can be trusted with this thing, it’s Hanji. Shit, maybe they’ll even succeed. 

I can’t help but feel a hopeful little jolt in my stomach.

Hanji sighs and gives me a lopsided smile before they continue at their normal volume. “So, when I couldn’t get the key to talk any more, I thought I’d see if what it _did_ give me could be altered to affect other so-called ‘evils.’ How many different Mr. Hydes can I hit, you know?” They point again to White Tag, Thomas or whatever, and I’m already starting to catch their drift. And I’m _very_ excited. “I made some changes and cursed a direwolf fang, just to see what would happen. When I touched my non-wolfed gopher with it, the tooth lashed out at him, just like the key lashed out at you. That’s why he’s got the bandage. The fang gave him a pretty good boo-boo. But when I touched the other two—”

“No reaction,” I breathe, scanning them for injuries and finding none. My excitement builds.

“Right,” Hanji says, leaning in again and grinning like the damn sun. “They’re seasoned weregophers, you know, drawn more than their fair share of blood. So _both_ wolves, bite and non-bite, can touch the fang without any blowback. Then I got ambitious.” I look up at them, allowing myself a rare touch of cautious optimism. “I put the fang on a collar.”

“Moon’s still weak,” I reply. “We don’t know if it’ll stop them from turning at the full moon yet, right?”

They shake their head, letting out a huffed breath. “No, but this might be even better. I put each of them in a closet with the collar on and exposed them to a perceived threat last night, one after the other. I figured why not, even if the moon’s still a waxing crescent.” Swear to god, they’re bouncing on the balls of their feet, and the next part tumbles out so fast I almost don’t catch it. But oh, I _do._ “When they felt threatened, _they turned!_ Not only that, but they used normal gopher logic to eliminate the threat! Weregophers are usually dumb as a box of hair, but not when they’re wearing the collar.”

I could fucking _kiss_ Hanji.

Licking my lips, I swallow in nervous anticipation and ask, “And when there wasn’t a threat anymore?”

They squeal slightly and bounce higher, grinning so hard their face must hurt. _“They changed back!”_

My eyes slide closed for a moment, and a relieved rush crashes over me. I might pass out.

“They can control the wolf,” I say, each word ringing fucking _golden_ in my own ears.

Hanji nods and squeaks again, biting their lip and looking _immensely_ pleased with themselves. Fuck, they deserve it. I’m gonna buy them something _awesome_. A bunch of lab equipment taped together in the shape of a giant-ass trophy. Enough instant coffee to caffeinate the damn Atlantic.

Only thing left to see is if the curse is more powerful than the moon, but there’s no denying the useful applications here if the results behave themselves on the human end. Smart, goal-oriented wolves on our side… Armin’s always hated that there’s no use for the raw, brutal power he wields when he’s under the wolf, especially when Marco and I drag our carcasses back from a particularly damaging hunt. Even though the wolf can tear through fucking concrete if it wants to, Armin feels immeasurably weak because he can’t _use_ it. It’s just his property-damaging, life-endangering body roommate.

Well. It _was._

I allow myself to imagine a near future where Armin doesn’t look like shit for the entire two weeks bracketing the full moon, where he stops curling in on himself so tight and feeling so helpless. Where he might be able to really come to terms with this animal inside him.

Looks good. Looks really good. 

We bask in the victory for a minute longer before Hanji bounds back over to the bile bowls, using what looks an awful lot like salad tongs to fish one of the leather straps out. It’s pretty long, dyed black by whatever organ pieces it’s marinating in, and a massive direwolf canine strapped tightly to it glints menacingly. The pale bone’s taking on a decayed hue as well. I imagine if it keeps sitting in that bath, it’ll turn as black as the leather it’s secured to.

“Based on my observations,” Hanji chirps, their eyes shining, “When they change, their necks should fill out into the strap so it forms a snug collar. That way it won’t slip off.”

“One for Mikasa, one for Armin?”

“Bingo.” Hanji lowers the fang back into its bath, adjusting the leather with the tongs almost lovingly. “They’ll be ready tomorrow, so we’ll have to find somewhere to do some experiments.”

“There’s a fallout shelter under the middle school north of campus,” I supply. “I can probably pop it open for you.”

Waving a hand, Hanji gestures at their unconscious grad student. “Moblit needs to practice his breaking and entering anyway. Thanks for the tip.”

I nod, still floating on the first good news I’ve gotten in a goddamn week and a half. Nothing’s _confirmed_ yet, of course, but I’m gonna go ahead and flip pessimism a big fat middle finger for once. I’m allowing myself this luxury.

\--

When I roll into our apartment, Marco looks up at me from his big squishy armchair, pushing up his glasses and smiling at my goofy grin.

“Hey there,” he says, right before I plant a wet, noisy kiss on his lips. “Mmph—you’re in a good mood. And you smell funny.” He leans closer and sniffs me, wrinkling his nose. “Is that _bile?”_

I bark laughter, even as I acknowledge my smelliness. Marco’s always had a very good nose.

I promise to tell him what’s got me so chipper, and to wash the stink off me, but first I give him a sloppy, enthusiastic blowjob, and he can’t quite find it in him to complain about my funny smell when I’m swallowing his come.


	3. When The Levee Breaks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I knew it was fucking coming.
> 
> That doesn't make this okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)

I have to say, I fucking _hate_ Halloween. 

There’s not usually much of an issue with the day itself. Or rather, there fucking _wouldn’t_ be if not for all the media bullshit that comes with it these days. You know there’s actually a movie out that basically glorifies Ouija board usage? I’d picket it if there was a fucking point. 

Regardless, one way or another, I always spend the entire month of November breaking into houses and punting spirits and poltergeists into the afterlife. It’s a chore.

Surprisingly, that’s not why I hate Halloween.

The first time Armin had to stock a display of gaudy rubber werewolf masks at Target, he broke down in near-panicked tears. Even worse, he had no one to turn to then. Not Eren, not Mikasa, not me. Especially not me.

Anyway, Halloween fucking sucks because I _live_ the shit Target paints onto cheap rubber and sells for twenty bucks all through October. I live the jumpscares that bang weakly through your TV’s tinny speakers. I have to check twice through all your stupid elaborate lawn ornaments just to make sure there’s nothing waiting for you to come home. Some of them get a little too realistic in a certain light, if you ask me.

For the most part, I can handle whatever’s tossed my way over the two months on either side.

This year, though, I have a whole new reason to hate Halloween.

\--

It comes that Friday morning. The headache, I mean.

I’m not sure if it’s the formaldehyde or the damn costume parade. I’d told them all not to fucking dress up, but it appears this crop of freshmen have already stopped fearing me. I’ve been way too nice lately.

Marco’s probably curled up in his chair with his service plan for Sunday, ten feet away from the internet at bare minimum. I wish I could go home and hide us away under the covers all day, but this semester has me blocked in all of Friday. What kind of crazy asshole signs up for an intro bio lab at five in the afternoon on a Friday? Whatever sort it is, I’ve got twenty-seven of them.

While the last set of witches and cheerleaders and dicks in onesies hack away at their fetal pigs, I sit at my desk and rub my temples as firmly as I can without punching holes in them. The kids seem to sense my mood. They’re oddly well-behaved today, aside from the whole costume mutiny thing.

I’ve been staring into the first bench’s pig’s innards for what feels like days when my phone buzzes in my pocket. Normally I’d grimace at the stupid little butterflies I get, wondering if it’s Marco asking how my day’s going or telling me some story or something. This time, though… this time the buzz brings with it a distinct and terrible anxiety.

I wait for minute before I move. Collecting myself. It’s about six-thirty. Maybe it’s Marco asking if I ate dinner before class, even though I never do. Maybe it’s Connie, telling me he and Sasha took out the flagship. Shit, maybe it’s Hanji, updating me about the collars. Anything good. Anything.

It’s Levi.

Closing my eyes for a second, I take a few deep breaths, then stand and poke my head through the open door to the adjoining lab, equally full of Halloween miscreants picking away at innards. I catch the attention of their TA, who looks immensely bored as she picks at a pile of midterms.

“Hey, Rico,” I mumble, running a hand through my hair to try to look casual. As she looks up at me, she adjusts her glasses and quirks an eyebrow. “Can you labsit? Family emergency, sorry.”

“I guess I still owe you from your brother’s wedding,” she sighs, standing and dropping her pen. “Go on, then.”

I nod at her. I almost wish she’d said no.

As I’m sprinting down the hallway, I yank my phone out of my pocket and open Levi’s text.

_‘He’s out.’_

\--

It’s been pouring all day, but apparently whatever deities are in charge right now are at least some measure of merciful, because it’s let up for the moment. About fucking time something worked in my favor, as small as this is.

I steer my bike south and work up a nearly-illegal speed standing on the pedals before I rip my phone back out and hit the Levi button. Half a ring in, he picks up, sounding like he’s puking into a gutter somewhere. Probably is.

“Old Trost,” he manages around dry heaves, spitting disgustedly before he continues. “We blocked him in.”

“Who’s there?” I jerk around a taxi that almost runs me down in the middle of an intersection. Not a priority. “What do I need?”

“Just come,” he chokes.

It sounds like he’d gone to say something else, but before he can get it out, a distorted, mechanical shriek _explodes_ into my ear, like a sound far too loud to transmit. Then an enormous _crash_ , a low whine, the clatter of Levi’s phone. Someone shouting in the background.

Wait—

No, nonono, I know that voice.

My heart combusts in my chest and I shove my phone back into my pocket.

Panic builds in stages for me.

First, the blood pressure. Second, the guilt. Third, the chest aching.

I skip over all that as I stand up on the pedals and push so hard my muscles burn and my joints creak.

The fourth stage is the eerie quiet, white noise drowning out the echoing sounds of Marco screaming.

\--

I almost ram my bike into the massive iron gate of that shithole tourist trap, distracted by the chaos brewing like a tornado in my skull. The office door to the side is hanging half off its hinges. Good, don’t need to pick it.

Dumping my bike outside, I blow into the office like hellfire and kick through a short wood cabinet, reaching through the falling splinters to yank out the handgun duct-taped to the bottom of the middle shelf. It’s loaded, silver bullets glinting in the low light, but I check anyway before I shove it in the back of my pants.

Levi has the key. I have a gun. 

Eren has Marco.

I’m sprinting before I can think about that too hard, and I don’t have to go far up the deserted main street before I hear crunching, tearing, and an _unholy_ howling, sick like nothing I’ve ever heard before. Not even in this godforsaken place.

My heart hammers in my chest. Vision’s tunneling.

Find them, find them, find them. 

I duck into the first intact side street I pass, gunning down the oppressive, watchful alley toward the roars of Eren’s devil uncaged. Something in his screaming resonates with every cell in my being and threatens to rattle me apart. Something horrifying. Something _furious_. It leaves behind an itchy static in my skull, shouting over all my thoughts and plans until there’s nothing left to me but raw animal fear.

Use it.

The alleys are tighter in this part of the city, littered with debris and broken glass and _blood_ , caked ancient and black on the slick ground, and it occurs to me somewhere in my primal brain that it’s raining again. My boots slip on fat cobblestones. My toes catch in broken mortar. 

Move. Move, _move_. 

I slam into the side of a building and whirl around the sharp corner, aiming for that _sound_ , but Eren echoes from every shattered doorway and leans out of every gutted window and hangs from every cracked red roof. Even the whispers of the damned that haunt this place cower in fear of his wrath.

I blow out onto the broad street that runs up the length of the curved, towering wall, and god save me, I find them.

Static.

Lightning flashes and rain pummels me, and Eren isn’t Eren anymore.

He has to be. But he isn’t, because he’s fucking three times his size and built like a fucking _tank_ and his jaw is unhinged and his eyes _burn_ with pure malice, and his feeble human face couldn’t handle the gaping maw twisting his mouth wide open so his cheeks are shredded and bloody in a grotesque Chelsea smile that churns my ashen innards.

He turns to the blackened sky and unleashes this tormented _wail_ that reverberates deep and awful and I swear to god it could set the fallow heavens ablaze. 

And yet I’m sprinting toward him.

I see Erwin bounding across slick rooftops, trying to flank him while he’s clamoring to the absent gods. I blow past a spray of rubble that looks like Eren fucking ripped a chunk out of a house with his bare hands and just _hurled_ it at someone. I see Levi dodging Eren’s monstrous fists and tripping around his feet, dwarfed by his impossible mass.

I do not see Marco.

The silence is rising, lapping at my ears and threatening to drown me, but I can’t. Not now. Not now. 

Somehow I hear my name being shouted, and I catch Hanji leaning out of a shattered second-story window and waving their arms frantically. They whip their head to the side, then vault out just in time for Eren’s fist to blow out the entire wall. The roof crumples, Hanji lands in a neat roll and hauls ass toward me, and Eren sounds _mournful_ when he pulls his arm back and yowls. He pitches his handful of demolished furniture like a goddamn curveball. 

Right at me.

_“Jean!”_ Hanji barrels into me and knocks me out of the way, then drags me off the main road, down a claustrophobic alley made miniscule by the two rows of houses leaning against each other as they crumble. My shoulder creaks from their crushing grip on my arm. No time.

“Key, key, key,” I spit, staring desperately at the back of Hanji’s head. _“Key!”_

“It won’t _fit_.” Hanji skids around a corner, this alley open to the downpour slicking my hair into my eyes and sheeting icy down the back of my shirt. They turn back to me and shove a fucking _crossbow_ into my chest. The loaded bolt has some kind of cartridge built into it, full of goop that glows a sickly green. “He’s much bigger than we could have thought. We can’t get it over his head.”

I don’t have words. I clutch the crossbow with wildly shaking hands and wheeze uselessly at Hanji. They dig the key out of their pocket. It’s wrapped in a loose handkerchief, but their hands are covered in the same slices I got from the goddamned thing, blood and rain trickling over their bruised knuckles. The knot in the leather strand is undone.

“Someone has to tie it around his neck.”

I gape further.

“The bolts are sedatives,” they spit, talking a mile a minute and hunching their shoulders tight when a fucking bomb-like _crash_ echoes close by. “I’m firing until he goes down.”

That could kill Eren. Hanji knows. Their hand trembles when they hold the key out to me, wordlessly giving me a choice. 

Fuck.

I take the key, but my mouth is still flapping, and just as they snatch the crossbow back and make to sprint away, I croak, _“Marco?”_

Hanji pauses without turning to me. The world goes horribly still for a moment. It seems to stretch forever as they choose their words.

“Eren knocked him into a house. He didn’t come back out.”

_Crash._

Thunder or buildings, I don’t know.

Hanji whips around a corner and is gone.

From the quiet that spans my dead chest, something erupts hot through the cracks and consumes everything within me in a whirling conflagration.

Rage.

_Rage._

I shove the leather strands holding the cursed key between my teeth and let the fucking thing dangle from my grimace as I scale the rotting lattice nailed into the leaning house next to me, aiming for the roof. Where the key brushes and bumps me, it slices into my chest, under my collarbone, but all I feel is the heat spreading warm from every razor-like laceration.

The rain, the thunder, the screams, blood, pain, fear, despair guilt _hurt_ ignite every part of me.

I’m flitting across the roofs as if on wings toward Eren, flanking him like David to Goliath, the gun frozen in the small of my back and my dead blood running in rivulets down my chest. I move, move, move, like I fucking grew up in this damned place, Eren’s agonized howls rattling the condemned remains of Old Trost.

Erwin sees me coming way before we nearly collide behind Eren’s back. Goliath is distracted. Skidding to a halt on one knee, Erwin laces his fingers together and braces himself, and when I land my boot in the cradle of his palms he launches me right onto Eren’s hunched shoulders.

I’m too clumsy.

My foot slips on his bare flesh and that’s when I notice that his skin is _steaming_ where it boils off the fucking rain. I grab fistfuls of his matted hair to steady myself, but he’s already reached up and seized my thrown-out leg, and then I’m flying again.

Somehow, I remember to cradle my head. 

I crash into the street like a meteor, bounce hard, slide in the pooling rain. The impact jolts the key out of my mouth as I roll. 

Bones snap loud like twigs. Ribs. Wrist. Shoulder dislocates. Nose breaks against my knee. Teeth draw gushing blood from my tongue and my cheeks and my tongue again. The world spins fast, so fast. Head cracks off the ground. Abrasions. Spin.

Blind pain howls over even the panic flooding me, stabbing and ripping.

I stop rolling and cough out a tooth or two, some blood. Levi skids to a halt beside me and reaches instinctively for my pulse. He’s covered in blood from his nose, and he’s white as a sheet.

Eren must be screaming in his head. Levi’s ears are bleeding too.

When I try to stand, my leg explodes in misery, but my brain severs the signal before I can figure out what’s broken.

Leaning toward us with a gut-wrenching _roar_ , Eren flexes his talons and his tongue flops useless and black against his chin, and then I see the key glinting on the street between us.

I’m already crawling, the shrill of my own whistling breath deafening in my ears, scrabbling, but someone gets there before me.

Marco grabs the leather strand in one limp, bloody hand. Half his fingers are broken. He turns, blind with fury, and hauls the harpoon like a goddamn Spartan without stopping to see if it lands. It does. Rusted metal pries between his ribs like the spear of the divine, and still Eren doesn’t blink.

He just snorts steam and stomps forward and _grabs Marco oh my god—_

I’m scrabbling again but I’m slow and broken and all I can see is the blown-out hole where Marco’s spine should have been _I can’t breathe I can’t breathe move move move—_

Marco twists back and whips the key at Eren’s gaping mouth, toward the blackness of his throat, but he _misses_. The brass tinkles uselessly against the bridge of Eren’s nose. The curse lashes out in a sickening _squish_ and a _crunch_ as a gash carves through Eren’s face, through the flattened bones of his nose and across his cheek, splattering black blood across his dark skin. Marco struggles, kicking, his mouth open like he’s screaming and I’m standing.

Eren brings Marco closer.

His face knits sloppily in a shower of steam and he flexes his horrifying jaw.

The gun’s in my hand.

Eren holds Marco tight. His blazing eyes flare violent green. _Joy._ He tilts his head. His jaw cracks. His mutilated grin widens, then his teeth start to draw together.

I can only see one of Marco’s eyes. The other is obscured by the black-slick fangs closing over half his head and half his torso and the gun is in my hand. Safety off.

Marco meets my gaze.

I haven’t seen _that_ fear since a desolate bathtub in Jinae.

I will not let another monster take him from me.

I aim between Goliath’s manic eyes and wonder with a thrill what color its brains will be under my boots.

Time is slow, so slow, too slow for my weak organic sack to seem anything but cumbersome as I start to pull the trigger, but Levi shatters the pause when he kicks the gun out of my hand and knocks my one good leg out from under me. 

My finger still catches the trigger just enough to fire. The silver bullet grazes the beast’s skull, ripping hot through the wrinkled flesh beside its frenzied eye. The jolt startles it. It drops Marco and slaps its hands against its face with a cracked shrill, steam billowing out between its claws.

Marco’s smart. He moves, his good hand slapping over the key and spraying blood over the brass, but he’s already limping away, past Levi, in front of me where I’m sprawled on the street. Between me and it.

The abomination _roars_ , ripping its hands away from its face, and the sound summons deafening thunder to lend it blood-curdling force. It snorts wildfire again, twice, three times before it reaches up and then brings the entirety of its brute force down onto the ground below it.

The street cracks, quakes, gives. 

A sinkhole devours the monster whole and takes half the block with it into the void under Trost.

There’s a splintering sound, the booming crashes of entire houses falling through the cavernous depths, but as the echoes fade, the street becomes violently still.

The silence fills my ears and my mouth like blood, covers my eyes, fists its claws in my clothes and my hair, and it claims me for itself.

\--

When I wake up, I’m already panicking.

Everything _hurts_ , I’m fucking _dying again_ , I know I am, and my mouth is dry and everything hurts and everything else creaks and cracks and my stomach is a razor wire minefield when I bolt upright and my breath shreds my chest as it tears out of my lungs and my head is splitting and I’m _alone_.

I’m alone.

_I’m in hell._

I’m screaming.

The arm that can move flings my pins-and-needles fingers into my knotted hair and _yanks_ and my throat cracks and whistles as through sand, and then I’m _surrounded_.

The beast’s hellfire eyes blaze through the center of my frantic vision no matter where I look, but in my periphery I catch pink bears on a broad chest, and then something tidal blows consciousness straight out of the back of my skull and everything is black.

\--

I wake up again. For some definition.

Everything is quicksand. The air around me buffets my swollen head in waves, my ears ring, and I can’t feel any part of my body. I’m floating. Sensory deprivation. 

“We gave you a sedative,” comes a voice from another dimension, distorted by some cosmic signal by the time it reaches my flooded ears.

Oh. Yeah. That makes more sense.

“We can’t tie you to the bed, Jean,” the aliens drone in unison, loud and quiet and loud again like someone’s fucking with the volume knob. “Your body’s too fucked up.” A tired sigh whistles past my ear, riding smooth on a wave of white noise and _hush, hush_. “Think you broke the record for the most broken bones. Beat your own high score.”

A soft laugh, then another voice contributes to the broadcast. “Moron.” Emotionless, this one, but for mild derision. If they have derision on their world.

I wonder if these beings can understand my feeble, primordial tongue, or if they’re so far removed that I just seem pathetic. An amoeba wiggling in their petri dish. I give it a shot.

My lips part over the course of a hundred years, every dry, shriveled cell sticking together until they’re forced apart by my stale breath. I’m surprised the aliens haven’t given up yet, given that all I can summon up from my desert throat is a weak death rattle, but they’re powerful beings. Of course they understand.

“Marco’s safe. He’s awake next door. Roughed up almost as bad as you.”

I am satisfied, and I sink into oblivion.

\--

I have no idea how long I’m under, no idea how much of me is broken or missing. Everything is a dark, infinite expanse where time is a puff of smoke but every second lasts a century. The smoke fills me up and curls around me, and I float.

Marco, Marco, Marco.

My Marco. 

I wish he was here with me. Eternity is so lonely. I always knew I’d hate to live forever, but recently I’d begun thinking that maybe if Marco was there too it wouldn’t suck so hard. Still, I’m here, and I am alone in the frozen fabric of space.

God only knows how fast or how far I float. I’m drifting in and out of cognizance through my whole silent journey, slowly sinking into the realization that _this is it_. This is what I am now. A glowing ember from a star gone supernova, flung deep into the recesses of the dark universe. A traveler, a tourist. That’s it. Forever.

_‘Wrong way, idiot.’_

That voice… the bell it rings is so faint I almost miss it. Too faint to recognize, just a whisper of sand. Maybe it’s nothing.

There’s something like a hand fisting in my torn chest. I can’t focus enough to see who or what it is. I just know that it’s warm.

The hand pulls, up and a bit to the right, and in the vacuum of space there’s nothing to stop an object from moving in one direction forever. 

I am flitting between galaxies, limp fingers trailing through sparkling rivers of stars, and then I am asleep.

\--

The first time I wake up without screaming and without hallucinating, everything still aches. Every part of me produces a buzzing grievance that averages out to a weak, pained groan in the still air around me. My mouth is so damn dry and my brain still doesn’t work too great, but I’m alive. I’m here.

Breathing hurts, and so does moving. I take a deep breath and open my eyes anyway, scanning the blurry room around me. Nothing moves in the darkness.

There’s another bed next to me, a pile of bandages and blankets, and after a while of squinting and blinking, I realize it’s _Marco._

He’s asleep or unconscious, but he’s here, which means he’s not dead.

Before I can even begin to sort out my mangled corpse enough to sit up and go to him, the door opens, and Reiner bustles in looking like fucking roadkill. Well. I haven’t looked down yet. He’s probably a mile more presentable than I am.

“If you even _think_ about leaving that bed,” he grumbles, moving between me and Marco to poke at the array of beeps and boops I’m hooked up to, “I will put you under again.”

I screw my swollen face up at him. It hurts. A lot. One step closer to looking like Sylvester Stallone. 

He sits in a chair between my bed and Marco’s and rubs at the bridge of his nose, exhaustion apparent in every part of him. “You two put Annie through the ringer this time. Both got so much metal in you now, you could give Wolverine a run for his money.” He leans back in his chair and looks at me, flashing a tired smile before he continues. “Marco’s gonna need a knee replacement, you know that? The thing’s destroyed. His physical therapist is gonna gut the both of you. Oh, by the way, you’ll be in PT right along with him, so good luck.” 

I think I left my language capabilities in a puddle somewhere, because all I can do is wheeze at him. Reiner has mercy and pours me some water, helping me sip it through a dumb little coffee straw. It’s nowhere near revitalizing, but it’s a start.

“You guys need to _stop_ for a while,” he murmurs after a minute, catching my eye. “Stop fighting. There are others to pick up the slack, and you _have_ to recover. You’re lucky you’re not fucking dead, the both of you.”

Words may fail me, but apparently the large section of my brain devoted to guilt is at full power, because it loudly informs me that Marco wouldn’t be doing this if not for me. My brow furrows as I cast my gaze to the sheets. At least it seems I have both my legs. Both arms, too. I’m a fucking cartoon mummy of bandages, though, and my left wrist is encased in an obnoxiously orange cast. There’s a scrawling of runes in messy Sharpie up the back. If I’m not mistaken, it translates to something that would offend the most vulgar of dwarves. Nice.

“Can’t stop yet,” I croak, my voice near-silent. 

There’s a long pause then, the air between us thick, heavy. I hold my ground.

“Once is enough, Jean,” Reiner whispers. I pretend not to know what he means. “You saved the world once. No one expects you to fight every single battle. Your sacrifice… it’s _enough_.” I continue staring down at my toes, trying not to think about how hard I’ve been fighting since then. How driven I’ve been, almost to the point of mania. How desperately I’ve struggled against failure until now.

I wonder if Bruce Wayne ever started feeling like the bat was an obligation, rather than a rational choice. If he ever felt crushed under the expectation that he’d save Gotham every single time.

Reiner sighs when he figures out that I’m not going to respond. He lets it go, though, holding the water out to me again, and I toughen up and take it myself this time. Fiddling idly with his badge, he says, “Eren’s still in the space under Old Trost. He hasn’t come out yet, and no one’s seen or heard him.”

“What’s down there?”

He shakes his head, then stands and moves to fiddle with Marco’s beep box. “Nothing good.”

Thanks. Buddy. I let my eyes slide closed, my body sagging back into the rough sheets. 

Fuck.

I almost killed Eren. I _would have_ killed Eren.

My mind floods with those frantic last thoughts, where I forgot entirely that Eren’s a person. Shit, that he’s my fucking _friend_. I broke him down into just another thing that goes bump in the night, and I aimed a gun right between his eyes, and I felt a spark of sick excitement at the idea of blowing him away.

I snort. Pain radiates across my busted face in rays.

Maybe I’m the fucking monster here.

Reiner tells me that Hanji and Erwin are roughed up, but okay, and that Levi has a beastly concussion, and that it is November 5th, 2014, and then he buggers off and leaves me to my thoughts.

Bad call, generally.

\--

I sleep a _lot._

They draw the blinds in the room, so it’s pretty much always dark, and the temptation to rest is generally too hard to resist. For Marco too, it seems. 

When I’m not sleeping, I’m looking at him. He’s so far away, too far for me to reach, but at least I can see him. I can see the soft rise and fall of his breath. I can see the bruises on his face and his one good arm fading, turning green, dissipating. I can watch him dream, if I’m lucky, and for the most part they don’t seem to disturb him. 

The first time we’re awake at the same time, he peers at me blearily, then gives me this gorgeous, dopey grin that fucking makes my heart swell in my chest and hammer like I’m a damn teenager again. Like I’d woken him up from an afternoon nap. There’s nothing of his fury there now, not in the catch of his teeth around his chapped lip nor between the wrinkles beside his bright eyes, nothing of the terror or the hopelessness. Just Marco, looking at me and smiling so beautiful it makes my whole body warm. 

I blame my misty eyes on general pain.

It takes a while, with a lot of cringing and more than a few actual pained tears, but I eventually manage to crawl into the space Marco makes for me on his bed. As long as we don’t fuck up our beeps or our boops, the care staff allows it, and thank fucking god for that.

He talks to me, assuring me without being prompted that none of the shit that happened to him is my fault. None of it.

“I live this life because it helps people,” he murmurs, his unbroken hand stroking through my disgusting, stringy hair. “No force, no obligation, no guilt.”

It’s not my fault that he followed Levi into Old Trost when Levi came looking for me in a hurry. It’s not my fault that Marco’s knee gave out at the worst possible moment and earned him a field trip through about three rotted walls. It’s not my fault that Eren tried to eat him. Not my fault, not my fault, not my fault.

I’m really glad Marco’s ribs aren’t as mangled as mine, because I soak through his hospital gown where my cheek is shoved against his heart. He holds me while I sob into him, broken and scared and _so tired_ , and he lets me get it all out while I’m still exhausted enough that it comes easy.

He tells me that Eren was already in Old Trost when it happened. He’d been passing by earlier, and he’d heard a group of fucking idiot kids planning to break in after hours. For fucking Halloween. 

Eren had followed them in like a dumbass when they brushed off his warnings, no matter how angry he got, no matter how loud, and he’d texted Levi to warn him. Hey, some assholes might wake up something nasty, just so you know. That sort of thing.

Eren was totally fine until something whispered to him from the darkness. Something twisted.

He may not be psychic, but Eren’s always believed in ghosts, and this ghost believed in him right back.

It went downhill.

Erwin kicked down the office door and got the idiots out, Levi and Marco tried to find Eren, Hanji came prepared with all kinds of sedatives, from horse to sea-bear, and between the four of them they failed utterly at stopping Eren’s devil. And now he’s gone, vanished into the ancient sewers or whatever like Solomon Fucking Grundy.

None of this is my fault. I did the best that anyone could, as Marco puts it. I was just at ground zero, as Connie said once.

Marco’s cast is plain white, and doesn’t have any insulting runes on it. It covers his palm, his wrist, up over his elbow in thick plaster. The second time that arm has borne a cast. Only the second. Both were tangentially related to me.

_But_. Neither were my fault. 

I repeat all of these things in my head until I start to believe it, and the exhaustion and the relief bowl me over in a wave and drag me into a normal, regular, dreamless sleep.

Eren’s eyes do not follow.

It’s not the best I’ve ever slept, but I’ll fucking take it.

\--

Bunking with Marco improves my mood considerably. It’s much less cold, and much easier to trace my fingers across his skin, skating over wide bruises and scabbed-over slashes. He lets me learn his body again, as I have countless times before and I will countless times more. It soothes us both. He drags the tips of his fingers over my scratchy jaw, around bandages and stitches, warm and gentle and so goddamn perfect.

I love talking to Marco, don’t get me wrong. But sometimes we don’t _have_ to talk. 

There’s something about his proximity, always has been. Hard to describe.

Let me put it this way. When I’m at school, I’m jittering my leg _constantly_. It drives my students insane. But I need to. Like a shark, I need to move. I need to be _doing_ something all the time, even when I’m bone-tired. My version of relaxing is looking for hauntings or making extra wards or researching. My idea of downtime involves a book in one hand and a knife in the other.

Call me a workaholic.

Around Marco, though, my leg is still. Sometimes for hours. 

I’m not restless or anxious with him. I’m not being driven by some machine, nor measuring my worth in units of constant productive motion. 

Marco soothes my spirit. He lets me believe that it’s okay to just be still for a while. To really relax. To close my eyes because it’s comfortable, not because sleep is dragging me away kicking and screaming. The time we spend wrapped around each other without speaking or moving, just being close… that’s not time wasted to me.

I can’t say I’m terribly familiar with the concept of comfortable quiet, let alone _peace_ , but that’s what I get in Marco’s arms. Peace and quiet. 

It seems simple, I know. And maybe to some people, that’s a ridiculous thing to cling to. But look, when you’ve lived twenty-eight years in perpetual, frantic motion, the idea of standing still for a while with no guilt or consequence becomes a priceless treasure. It’s sinking into a warm, comfortable armchair after twenty-eight years of balancing on the rough branch of a tall tree with no damn back support. It’s sitting in that chair and letting your mind wander aimlessly after twenty-eight years of constantly grinding and equating and memorizing, and _not feeling guilty for it_.

It’s coming home.

Home is where Marco smiles at me and runs his gentle thumb over my half-healed split lip. It’s where he cracks _awful_ jokes with this glowing expression of pride at his own dorkiness. It’s where I learned how to laugh until my sides and my face ache, where I learned how old people dance at retirement home Christmas parties, where I learned how to be honestly lazy on rainy Thursday mornings. 

It’s where I learned that no moment spent being alive is wasted.

I take these skills he helped me learn and I use them to absolve myself of the botched fight for Eren’s soul. I use them to accept that we _collectively_ fucked up. I use them to narrow down the task at hand and to start thinking of a plan to fix our shared fuckup.

No longer am I pacing in the darkness, blinded by bad things that happened around me and taking their weight onto my sagging shoulders.

I still feel _guilty_ , of course, this isn’t the fucking resurrection of Christ. But I feel guilty for demonizing Eren and condemning him. I feel guilty for honestly wanting to blow his brains out, and for trying very hard to do so. I feel guilty for something I actually _did_ for once, not something I bore witness to.

Guess I should go apologize to him.


	4. This Devil's Workday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If Hanji's right, Eren might've bitten off way more than he can chew. Things are looking more and more complicated the longer he's under Old Trost. He is never gonna hear the end of this from me, swear to god.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)
> 
> also things... may have gotten more complicated than previously anticipated
> 
> so much for a short sequel ;;;;;;;

Hanji perches on my abandoned bed beside us, flipping through an ancient, smelly tome while Levi spreads a map of Trost’s sewer system over mine and Marco’s laps. The corners are ripped, the folds hasty, which kind of leads me to believe that he stole it from god knows where. There’s a gaping hole in the western sewer system around Old Trost, like all the tunnels and the pipes just avoid that whole wretched place. Can’t blame them.

“Those walls don’t have foundations or anything,” Armin explains, leaning across Marco to trace the horseshoe shape of the towering cage on the map. “They just keep going underground, until they hit what looks like bedrock. That’s why the tunnels divert around them.”

I make a face and rub the back of my neck, sitting up further with a huff. “Why, though? The fuck were they trying to keep out back then, the mole people?”

“It’s not what they were trying to keep out,” Hanji chips in, face still buried in their foul book. Seriously, I’m surprised anyone let that thing into the hospital, it smells like microwaved death. “It’s what they were trying to keep _in.”_

My stomach does an uncomfortable sort of flop.

“Okay,” I drone after a beat. I think I’m much less invested in getting an answer to that question now. Not that I have a choice. 

“There are weird holes in history around that place. Inconsistencies in the lore,” Hanji continues, flicking through a few aged pages. “I’m willing to bet it has its own sewer system, so if we’re lucky, Eren’s still down in the tunnels. But if we’re _really_ lucky—” I really fucking hope not—“He’ll have delved deeper, into the space underneath.” Ugh.

“Why on god’s green earth,” I grouse loudly, my distaste clearly evident, “Would that make us _really_ lucky?”

Levi snorts, rolling a cigarette idly between two fingers. I know, I know. Hi, this is Hanji, they’re batshit crazy and deeply invested in leaving none of Earth’s dark depths unplumbed. 

Sighing, I lean back against the raised bed and rest my head on Marco’s shoulder. He’s pursing his lips, squinting down at the maps and mulling things over, same as always. When he speaks, it’s soft, and a little suspicious. “You know, I’m not entirely sure, but it didn’t _sound_ too much like there were sewers down there.”

Interesting. I furrow my brow, thinking back, trying to remember anything I can from right before I passed out. I remember… Eren roaring, breaking the street, the sinkhole…

My eyes widen slightly. Armin gives me a nervous look. “No, Marco’s right,” I breathe, chewing on my thumbnail. “It echoed the whole way down, sewers would be like thirty, forty feet down at most.”

Armin looks between us, then pulls one of those dumb thick tourist pamphlets over. “You think it sounded deeper?” I nod, watching him unfold the map of Old Trost. He scans it for a while, tapping a finger against his lips. “I’ve never seen a sewer access there, now that you mention it,” he mumbles. After a moment, he looks at Mikasa over his shoulder, who just tilts her head in question. “Have you?”

She sighs quietly, sharp eyes falling to the colorful pamphlet, then shakes her head. “There’s piping in the houses,” she says, coming to stand beside Armin. “But the deepest we’ve been is the jail’s basement cell block.”

“Why would there be piping, but no sewers?” Marco blinks down at me as I ask, worrying his lip between his teeth. “It’s not like they just emptied their sewage into the depths.”

“Maybe it’s like Paris,” Marco hums. “They mined underneath the city for ages, now there are parts that sit over big catacombs or just… empty, abandoned mines.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of that shit,” I grouse. “A huge mass grave or something, right? That’s a tourist trap now, though. If Old Trost had something like that, they’d definitely sell it out, even if it’s just open caves. Any way they can make money off that place, they will.” Armin nods pensively, and I sigh, thinking again about the street crumbling like clay under Eren’s fists. 

“It sounded deep down there… and hollow,” Marco mumbles, biting his lip again. “Almost like dropping a rock into a well.”

Unease creeps into the air again. No one really has a response for that. I like this fucking place less and less as time goes by. It’s illogical, filthy, dangerous, and haunted as _hell_. My opinion always has been that we should just fucking fill the walls with concrete and be done with it, and all this shit isn’t swaying me in Old Trost’s favor in the least. I scrub my hand over the side of my face, careful of the stitches through my eyebrow, and blow out an exasperated sigh.

“So we’ve got a theoretically bottomless chasm encased in mysterious walls, no way in or out aside from a big hole in the ground, and no idea where Eren could have gone.” I look around, waiting for the silver lining, but even Marco’s giving me a pained look. “We don’t even know what _else_ could be down there. If Hanji’s right, and there’s something caged up down there, there’s no way in hell we could even begin to gear up for that fight. It could be a fucking den of _Balrogs_ for all we know.”

“Maybe it’s dead,” Mikasa says helpfully, although none of us are stupid enough to believe that our luck would be that good, her included.

“We have to think about Eren, too,” Armin says after an awkward beat. “Do you think he’s still, uh.” He looks to me for help, then thinks better of it and looks at Marco instead. “U-uncaged?”

“This might seem weird,” Marco murmurs, scratching his head. “But I kind of hope he _is_. I mean, that form seems really powerful, right? Resistant to pain, pretty sturdy… there’s no way Eren’s human body could survive a fall like that, if we’re right about how deep it is.” 

Marco’s right. If he’s still Goliath, there’s a chance he’s okay. But, if he’s still Goliath, then he’s still very large and _very_ angry. Plus, Marco and I are in bum shape, so we’re pretty much on the bench if a fight starts up. Eren’s way overpowered, too. Everything we threw at him barely fazed him.

Except…

I squint, thinking about the gun, not thinking about the monster I was when I was holding it. It fired, and the bullet grazed his face…

And he flipped out.

Oh.

“Well, this might not be the _best_ news,” I sigh, “But it seems like whatever Eren’s infected with follows the same rules as lycanthropy.” Everyone looks back at me, so I shrug and elaborate. “His body changes with the same sort of ridiculous cell growth as werewolves, and Hanji made those collars from the key, right?” Hanji looks up at me from their book as well. “Plus, the only thing that actually seemed to _hurt_ him was the bullet. Silver.”

There’s a short, unexpectedly weird pause.

“Why did you have silver bullets?” Armin asks, trying really hard to look casual. He’s bad at it. I stare at my toes.

“It was the closest weapon I could reach before I came,” I lie. “I was in a rush. Figured bullets are bullets.”

Armin doesn’t need to know that I’ve had that gun stashed in the ticket office at Old Trost for several years. Hopefully he’s forgotten that I don’t keep guns at home.

“Well, it’s a start,” Marco sighs, saving my ass with some measure of grace. “At least we know we can make a dent, right? If he’s still in that form, it’s not like we’ll be starting in last place.”

My ray of sunshine. I run a hand through my hair, trying to get the rest of the ducks in a row too. “How did those collars ever turn out, by the way?”

Armin’s face lights up then, a definite improvement from the deepening melancholy that had been spreading over him, and he leans toward me excitedly. “They’re _perfect!_ Mikasa and I could both control our wolves! It hurt like hellfire to change, but it’s worth it.” His beaming grin pulls a soft smile across my face, despite myself. “Plus, I didn’t feel drunk, not like I usually do under the fang. Totally lucid.”

“That’s awesome,” I laugh, and I really fucking mean it. This is what I was talking about. I’ve never seen Armin anything less than depressed about the wolf, but now he has a reason to resent it a little less. Only a good thing, in my opinion.

“We still don’t know if we can control them during the moon, though,” Armin sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. He looks over at Mikasa, who gives him the tiniest ghost of an encouraging smile. “I guess we’ll find out tonight.”

I raise my eyebrows. “The moon’s _tonight?”_ Armin and Mikasa nod.

“We can’t wait anymore,” Levi says suddenly. I’d almost forgotten he’s here, jeez. “A week is too damn long to leave him marinating.”

“It’s dangerous for Armin and Mikasa to go,” I start, “Even with the collars. We have to test them first, see what they do during the moon. Plus, Reiner said Annie will kill us if we leave before tomorrow, so.”

“You’re not going,” he replies curtly, like it’s the end of the fucking conversation.

The room goes a weird, crackling kind of tense. 

Everyone in here knows what it’s like when Levi and I butt heads.

“The fuck I’m not,” I say, my voice just as solid as his. “I’ve been in this since the start. I’m gonna see it through.”

“No, you’re not.” He comes forward and looms at the end of the bed, somehow the most menacing person in the building despite looking like he escaped pediatrics.

Luckily, I’m stupid as hell.

“ _Yes_. I am.” I sit up again, meeting his stare. “Eren’s my friend too. We fucked with his head before, keeping all this shit from him. We let him in, it fucking backfired, and now he needs our help more than ever.” Levi’s expression is still that of solid ice. “I’m the one that had the dreams. Grisha Jaeger called _me,_ not you.” His eye twitches, and Marco tenses further beside me. I’m treading dangerous waters here. “I’m going.”

“You’re useless,” Levi retorts. My frown deepens. “Half your body’s broken and the other half is worn out. You can’t fight. You’ll just hold us back if we have to carry you.”

I know what game he’s playing. On some level, I understand why he’s playing it, too. Shit, even Levi gets scared, although there’s no real way you could ever tell unless you already know the signs. 

Eren, Mikasa, and I, we’re the Lost Boys to Levi’s crabby goth Peter Pan. He pulled us out of death, and he kept our asses in line when life started hitting a little too hard. Mikasa got her shit sorted when she was young, she’s always been some insane level of badass. Eren’s got a short temper, but he keeps it all bottled up, so he managed to make it through life without causing _too_ much trouble. Nothing that wouldn’t earn him a slap on the wrist and a _boys will be boys._

The only reason I get the shit jobs and Eren doesn’t is because after my mom passed, I took my anger out on everything around me, and nothing short of wrestling the devil would keep me in line. That, and it was the best way Levi had to get me out of my house and away from my brother. I’d have crashed and burned a long time ago if not for the weird, twisted sense of purpose I get from doing what I do. I’m the problem child. Always have been, always will be. It’s just in my splintered bones, I guess.

Still, Levi fucking loves us in his own stupid way, and that’s why he’s digging a hot poker into my weak spots. He’s already worried about Eren, lost in the depths of the earth. All he’s doing is trying to cut his losses.

If he’s worried about losing Eren, he doesn’t want to have to deal with losing me too. 

I know he’s reading my thoughts. Psychic bastard.

Levi rolls his eyes and leans down against the foot of the bed, and I know well enough that the removal of the broom from his ass means I’ve won. I sit back against the sheets, and everyone in the room seems to let out an apprehensively-held breath. “You’re not on the combat team,” he says, and I guess I can agree to that. “Mikasa, Armin, you two are. Collars or not. If you can’t control the wolves, we’ll just stay the fuck out of your way.” They nod, looking appropriately nervous. 

“I’ll float between combat and the rear squad,” Levi continues. “That’s Jean and Hanji. Jean, you’re on key duty. Find some way to get it on Eren. Stab him with it if you have to.” I grimace at the thought, but I suppose it’s not too bad of a fix.

“What about Erwin?” Levi quirks an eyebrow at me, so I shrug and clarify. “Man’s a beast. Heaviest hitter we’ve got since the stupid titan trio retired.”

“He’s got work,” Levi replies, seemingly unfazed by the absolute ridiculousness of what he just said. I stare loudly.

“Erwin can’t come because he’s on shift at _Target?”_

“In case you haven’t noticed, idiot,” Levi grouses, “Half of my staff is standing in this room, plus the one stuck in a glorified outhouse hole. No Erwin, no night manager, Target goes up in anarchy. We’ll be fine without him.”

I squint at him, still kind of flabbergasted by his priorities, but whatever. 

“Um,” Marco interjects softly. “What about me?”

I turn and stare at him. “Marco—”

“Jean, _really?”_ I raise my eyebrows, my mouth flapping open. He gives me an exasperated grimace. “I’ve been involved since the beginning too, whether you like it or not. I’ve been right here next to you the whole way. If it’s dangerous, and it _is_ , there’s no way I’m gonna sit here picking my nose while you get yourself killed.”

“B-but.” He quirks an eyebrow, and I swallow somewhat nervously. “Your knee’s a little, uh.”

He shrugs, examining his nails. “It’s getting replaced anyway, right?”

My jaw drops again.

Maybe one day I’ll learn to stop underestimating Marco. I know he’s an invaluable team member, and a fucking tank at that. He’s saved my ass more times than I can recall right now. He’s strong, and clever as all hell. 

Thing is, while he’s probably one of the strongest supports I have, he’s also my critical weakness. I’d do the bad kind of anything to keep him out of harm’s way. 

Gotta stop that. Somewhere in me, I know he’s mostly capable of protecting himself, but that knowledge gets steamrolled by the berserker I always become when he’s in trouble.

He reaches over and runs his knuckles over the flat of my cheek, bringing me back out of my head. Quirking a small smile, he says, “Besides, if you’re half stuffing, you’ll need someone as stuffed as you are to keep up with everyone else. Right?”

I can’t help but wheeze a chuckle at that, conceding with a nod. If nothing else, I’ll feel better about this whole thing with him beside me.

“You’re with Jean, then,” Levi says, standing up straight again. “Fucking ragtag team you lot make.”

“Oh yeah,” I deadpan, unable to prevent the huge, cheesy grin spreading across my face. “A psychic, a mad scientist, two furballs, a zombie priest, and my dumb ass, all teamed up to rescue Mr. Hyde.” Marco stifles a giggle in his hand, failing utterly at being subtle about it. Armin’s tying his hair up and grinning at Mikasa, whose amusement is betrayed by the little spark in her grey eyes, and Levi’s rolling his eyes so hard I’m pretty sure they’re gonna fall out of his head. “ _Way_ better than Scooby-Doo, if you ask me.”

As serious as this shit is, I can’t help but feel kinda giddy. Maybe there’s something in my IV. Either way, I’m already wired. Whatever we’re going into, at least I know we can face it. We’re a solid team.

Hanji always knows how to kill my buzz.

_“Aha!”_ they yelp, jumping up off my bed and grinning up at us. They look the kind of manic I would never, _ever_ hope to see before throwing myself into an unknown chasm, but there it is. Fan-fucking-tastic. “I think I figured out what’s down there.” 

We all stare at them with varying degrees of horror, and they blink around at us before they shrug it off and continue. 

“Most of the stories about that place have been torn out of history, for whatever reason, but this book seems to have survived intact. If I’m reading this right…” They squint down at the page again, scanning just to make sure. “Yep. Looks like Old Trost was just part of some kind of bigger walled civilization. Those walls were built by the survivors of some kind of disaster, basically overnight.” My eyebrows shoot up. Kinda fishy, given how deep they go and how resilient those walls are, but whatever.

They grin up at us again. Oh no. Chills run down my spine. “It seems like no one really ever _saw_ the walls being built. The survivors were taking refuge in a run-down husk of some city that had been burned out since the beginning of the disaster. They woke up one day, though, and found not a hint of the ruin they’d slept in. Just grass. Nothing between them and a monstrous ring of stone but a few miles of flowery hills in every direction.”

I like this less and less. So does Levi, if his constipated expression is any indicator.

Cradling their book to their chest, Hanji says, “Someone said it was divine providence, to protect them from what hunted them and let them finally settle down again. So they settled, and elected a king, and forgot all about the city that had stood there first.”

“I’m going to assume that you’re not buying the whole ‘merciful deity’ bit,” I sigh, chewing on my thumbnail again.

“Of course not,” Hanji chirps. “This book was written by the guy they made king. I found it in another place.” I really wish I could assume they meant Europe or something dumb like that. I know Hanji better than that, though. “That’s the story he wrote at first, but he starts opening up to the journal the more he writes in it. Desperation, probably. Turns out, this gentleman may have been particularly well-versed in old, forgotten magic. He may also have been very tired of running.”

My eyes shutter closed.

Fuck.

“Only one kind of old magic can build walls like _that_ from nothing,” they breathe, finally hitting their point. 

“Alchemy,” I supply weakly. “The bad kind.”

“Bad kind?” Armin asks, furrowing his brow. He gets it, though, and his eyes widen. “You mean demon alchemy?”

Hanji nods excitedly, finally coming forward and placing their book over mine and Marco’s legs. _Christ,_ that thing smells, and I’m sorely tempted to chuck it off me, knowing now what it contains. Ancient devil’s magic is insanely powerful, but it uses dark pacts and necromancy instead of chemistry. None of those old stories have good endings.

The drawing sprawled across the open pages is scattered, hasty, but it gets its fucking point across. More proof that this guy was fucking around with demon alchemy. There’s no way this thing came from any logical sort of plane. Shit’s made out of like seventeen different animals stapled to some pissy, fire-breathing bastard, and the whole conglomeration’s got its fat ass parked on a dopey-looking dragon. 

Even worse than that face alone is the fact that I _know_ that face, which is generally not good news.

Marco looks suitably alarmed just by the sight of it. Me, I’m staring at the wall. Trying to come to terms with how very, _very_ fucked we are. Levi’s fighting to open the window, a cigarette already perched between his lips.

“Hanji, uh,” Marco murmurs, glancing around. Mikasa’s blank as always, and Armin’s slowly lowering himself into a chair. “Sorry, I think I missed something—”

“Oh, I never told you the author’s name,” they say, smiling widely and plopping onto the sheets next to my leg. “I think you might know him as Solomon.”

Marco blinks, then frowns, then kind of gapes at Hanji for a minute. “Like. _King_ Solomon? Son of David?”

“The same, that sly, deal-making bastard,” Hanji says, a weirdly fond lilt to their voice. Then again, I think Hanji’s been lusting after the guy’s work for the better part of twenty years, so Stockholm syndrome was probably inevitable. “Old Testament says he died a natural, peaceful death, right?” Marco nods dazedly, and Hanji leans closer, their toothy grin growing somehow toothier. “Solomon was regarded as a heretic, a warlock, and a demon-trapper. When has someone with so many fun hobbies ever died peacefully?”

“I, um.” Marco rubs the tips of his fingers over his lips, looking like the hamster wheel’s working overtime. “I thought everyone pretty much agreed most of those legends were just myths.”

“Marco,” I deadpan, giving him a soulless, tormented sort of smile when he looks over at me. “We saw a unicorn in the national park last month.”

He blinks, then turns his gaze upward, mumbling, “Oh, yeah…”

“Okay, okay,” I blurt as I wave my hands, trying to clear the air of all these bullshit riddles. “What exactly are you trying to say here, Hanji? That Solomon faked his own death, made his merry way into North America, and conjured up some walls to keep out predators? And Old Trost is all that’s left of them? What kind of bullshit timeline is this, anyway?”

“Fine then, if you wanna take the fun out of it,” they huff, standing again. “Solomon existed first in another plane. Faked his death, came to this plane when the earth was still young. Eons ago. This disaster happened, he raised the walled civilization, and while he was king, he spread his history all over this timeline too. Ego-booster.”

“But—hmm,” Marco hums, obviously flustered. “That’s one thing, but what does this have to do with what’s under Old Trost? And, uh. That guy.” He points at the porky bastard still sprawled across our legs. 

Hanji _beams_. They look like a goddamn shark. “He didn’t come alone.” They point to the thing’s ugly dude-face. “Among others, he brought someone he’d made deals with before. Someone he could control, and who knew how to bend the earth into towering monuments.”

“King Asmodeus,” I grumble, wishing I could spit the name’s aftertaste out too. “I think in the Old Testament they said Solomon raised Beelzebub to construct the First Temple, but that’s actually a different guy.”

Levi snorts, rubbing at the frown lines between his eyebrows. “Beelzebub wouldn’t listen to a scrub like Solomon. It was Asmodeus.”

Poor Marco. This is probably hard to swallow for people who _aren’t_ intimately familiar with the weirder parts of the Bibles. Marco, though, was very serious in seminary, and studying until he fell asleep every night kept the nightmares away. Thus, he’s probably at least somewhat familiar with the story of how Solomon built a temple in Jerusalem by controlling some demons. Now he has to restructure his loose grasp on ancient Hebrew demonology entirely, and we haven’t even gotten to the fun part yet.

“So, uh, Hanji,” I say, waving the lore out of the air again. “Without jizzing yourself about cross-pollinating timelines, why is all this important?”

“You are the biggest wet sandwich,” Hanji whines, but they comply. “Solomon brought his court of seventy-two demons over, and he made a deal with Asmodeus in exchange for the walls. Asmodeus said that no hunter would take Solomon’s kingdom, but that he wanted a kingdom of his own beneath the earth in return. Solomon agreed to let him pull all the ruins within the three concentric walls underground. Pretty sweet deal, given that there were _tons_ of ruins around, thanks to this disaster. There was the alchemical equivalent of fine print, though.”

Hanji tugs the sewer map out, pointing to the empty space where Old Trost is. “Asmodeus’s underworld realm would be identical to Solomon’s, walls and all. That’s why the walls go so far down. Also, to keep Asmodeus from getting too buff down there, Solomon divided the underworld into seventy-two districts, one for Asmodeus and each of his friends. If a demon left their land or were killed, their district would crumble and become solid earth again.”

“So you’re telling me,” I say, jabbing my finger toward Asmodeus’s stupid faces, “That he’s still fucking down there?”

“Seems so, yeah. The chief of Solomon’s devils, as it were, not to mention the very last of the seventy-two that came with Solomon. Right here in Trost!” Hanji grins at me, and I roll my eyes.

“How convenient.”

“Where did you think the hellrift came from?” Levi asks from where he’s staring out the window. “That wasn’t Melinoë, no nymph could pull that shit off. She just took advantage of it. Shitty demon prince probably picked at the boundary for millennia.”

Fair point. I squeeze my eyes shut and let out a wheedling groan, partially because I never thought I’d have to think seriously about Old Testament-ass demons, and partially because I _know_ we’re not just gonna pop in, grab Eren, and pop out.

Can’t leave something that fugly down there alive. Or whatever.

“Are you _seriously_ suggesting we fight that thing _tonight?”_

“I suppose not,” Hanji hums, tapping their chin. “We probably need you two in good shape to take out Asmodeus. We’ll have to go back for him.”

“Assuming he doesn’t roll on us the second we enter his domain,” Levi says, ever the glittering ray of sunshine. 

I sigh and lean my head back, still trying to digest all of this bullshit. Hanging out with Hanji is like signing up for the kind of speed-eating competition where instead of feeding you hotdogs, someone shoves lore down your throat until you give up all hope of ever really understanding the world you live in. It’s a damn nightmare.

Why couldn’t it have just been fucking _sewers?_ Out of all the fucking places on this earth for Eren’s demon to jimmy its cage open, why did it have to be in the one damn place where the boundary between us and hell is nothing more than some shitty cobblestone streets? That asshole always has to make shit more complicated than it needs to be, whether he tries to or not.

When I look over at Marco again, he’s just kind of slumped next to me, looking rather defeated. I can almost see the smoke pouring out of his ears. 

“How’s it going over there, Padre?” I reach up and tuck some of his shaggy hair behind his ear. He sighs and leans into the feeling, pondering the general state of things until he finally shrugs and gives me a wobbly smile.

“King Solomon was a time-traveling interdimensional warlock,” he says tentatively. “One thing at a time, I suppose.”

I nod, tugging on his earlobe. “One thing at a time.”

“I’m started to see why you only ever ask three questions about a job, though,” he chuckles, his smile widening as he rubs his nose sheepishly. 

Shrugging obnoxiously, I rest my hands behind my head and close my eyes again. “If I know what it looks like, I can see it coming. If I know what it smells like, it can’t sneak up on me. If I know how to kill it, it’s toast. Anything else is just pleasure reading. Interesting, but generally unhelpful.”

“I guess I’m just too curious for my own good,” he replies, leaning over to lay his head on my bent elbow. I kinda hope he never loses his interest in the details like I did. He’s got the makings of a good loremaster. Then again, lore clearly makes people some measure of insane, if Hanji’s any testament to the trade. 

Levi stuffs his hands in his pockets and comes back over to the foot of our bed, looking like he could use a damn nap. I feel that. 

“We’ll be back for you an hour before sundown,” he says. Yeah, he’s already exhausted. We’re in for a doozy of a night.

When everyone else has left, presumably all to drink heavily before our appointment with the last American devil, we turn the lights off and set to getting some sleep. God knows we’ll need it.

Just as I’m drifting off, Marco whispers, “Hey, Jean?”

“Mmph, babe.” He pauses for a tick, so I open my eyes, taking in his bitten lip, his worried gaze aimed anywhere but my eyes, his furrowed brow. I reach up to rest my hand against his cheek, drawing my thumb over his cheekbone. “Marco?”

He licks his lips, then bites again, probably still trying to digest all the shit we hit him with. I lean in and kiss him gently, nudging my nose against his. He hums, then blinks up at me, anxiety written all over his expression.

“Why would a random ghost bring out whatever was in Eren?”

I pause.

The implications there kind of make me queasy.

“What’re you thinking?” I ask softly, not wanting to put any more dark theories in his head than there have to be.

“I don’t know. The kids he was following, they weren’t clear about what they saw in there. Babbling, you know?” He sighs, wrapping his arm around me a little tighter, holding me closer. “It just seems like an awful lot of old anger for some little spirit to stir up.”

Marco’s getting too good at this. He hasn’t learned to crush these ideas with stubbornly blind optimism yet, either. He hasn’t learned not to draw the line between Point A and Point Fucked yet, to ignore the tempting doors that link coincidences.

“How about this,” I murmur, kissing him again, and a few more times. “Let’s just focus on Eren for right now. Whatever’s in him, whoever’s company he’s keeping down there, doesn’t matter. For now, let’s just save Private Eren, and we’ll play the rest by ear.”

He breathes a weak laugh against me, resting our foreheads together. “You have the devil’s luck, you know that?”

“Hopefully not this devil.”

Smiling again, and looking slightly more at ease, Marco kisses me again, and before long we’re both snoring, putting the last few hours between here and hell to good use.


	5. Fire and Brimstone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was worse than I could have ever imagined.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)

I wish I could say I felt anything even _remotely_ approaching ‘prepared.’ 

When we wake up, the adrenaline high of having some iota of a plan has worn off, and Marco and I are left with this burning sort of unease. I guess we had time to sleep on the fact that we’re mostly-broken, barely-functional bags of metal and bones. Goody.

When Hanji comes to collect us, they look somewhat grim, but the expression brightens into excitement again fairly quickly.

It’s been so long since I’ve seen Hanji unaccompanied. Almost seems weird to see them without the sleep-deprived lackey, so as I take the pants they hand me, I ask, “Where’s Moblit?” 

“Oh, he quit again,” comes Hanji’s unfazed response from where they’re untying Marco’s absurdly-knotted hospital gown. I’d given up on the damn thing, honestly, it’s like some boy scout’s final project or something. The loud, sudden rip from behind me tells me they did too. “I expect him back in about a week, based on prior data.”

I make a face, adjusting my dick in my boxers before I zip my pants up and turn back to Hanji. “He’s quit before?”

“Oh, of course,” they chirp. “Six times this year, twice last year, and fourteen times the year he started in my lab.” They smile widely. To be honest, I’m not all that surprised. I’d fucking quit too if I was Hanji’s grad student. The languages, the bodily fluids, the old magic, the mess they make, the loremaster themselves... yeah, I guess it takes a certain breed of human to handle Hanji.

I shrug cautiously into my shirt, babying my still-sore shoulder, then plop back on the bed while Marco worms into his boxers. He’s slower than usual, what with his one arm out of commission, but he’ll ask for help if he needs it. Hanji moves back over to my old bed, where they’d dropped a massive duffel bag, and starts rooting around in what sounds an awful lot like a heap of scrap metal.

“Oh, Marco, don’t put your pants on yet,” Hanji mumbles, rummaging deeper. They get about shoulder-deep before I start getting worried.

“Hanji, what the hell is all that?”

“Don’t you worry about that.” They grin at me over their shoulder, hooking their foot around the bottom of the bed, and then, I swear to every god I know of, they fucking lean their entire torso into the duffel bag.

“Jesus, Hanji,” I sputter, leaning up to try and see. “ _Please_ tell me that’s a duffel bag of holding.”

“Something like that,” their voice shouts, and I’ll be damned if the sound doesn’t echo into the recesses of the bag.

“The point is that they’re supposed to be _compact,_ dude.”

“Sometimes I need to carry really big things!”

I guess that answers the question of how they got a full-sized taxidermied _moose_ into their home base lab last year. I look over at Marco, who’s just standing there in his underwear with his good hand over his face. Possibly praying. Who knows. I grin and chuck his shirt over at him, returning his good-natured eye-roll with a loud, wet raspberry. 

He sits back down next to me after wrangling his shirt on, our hands automatically finding each other while we watch Hanji slowly disappear into the bag. They make some kind of victorious noise, then chuck what looks like one of those old-fashioned leather doctor tool kits onto the bed. When they lean back out onto planet earth, they turn toward us with this _manic_ grin.

They are also holding what appears to be a metal leg, ripped right off a medieval suit of armor. Foot, calf, and knee-guard.

My eyes widen, and Marco’s jaw drops. 

“Don’t _worry,_ ” Hanji says, standing the armor on the floor next to Marco and turning back for the tool kit. “I’m not gonna take your leg off. I mean, I had to go out of my way to find this one so I _wouldn’t_ have to amputate, because Levi said we don’t have that kind of time, but honestly that’s the way I’d _rather_ go, because—”

 _“Hanji.”_ They blink over at me, suitably popped out of their rambling. Marco’s slowly turning green.

“Oh, right, right,” they mumble, coming to unroll the toolkit next to Marco. I lean around him to watch as Hanji pulls out a small, dark glass vial, along with a packaged syringe. At least they’re being sterile. “This is just a local anesthetic. It’s gonna turn off nociceptive signaling from your lower leg to your spine—”

I lean over and murmur translations in Marco’s ear. “Painkiller for your knee.”

“—But it’s also gonna turn off proprioceptive feedback.”

“You’re not gonna be able to tell where your leg is compared to the rest of your body. It’s gonna be weird.”

He blinks between us, letting me try to kiss the worry off his extremely stubbly face. “Is it... permanent?”

“Not very,” they reply.

I make a face and lean around to grimace at them. “What.”

“It’s, um,” they start, holding the syringe up as they draw some of the weirdly green liquid into the chamber. Why is everything they cook up weirdly green? “It’s still in beta, but we don’t have time to refine it, unfortunately.”

My eyes roll into the back of my head. Of course. Making a guinea pig out of my husband-candidate, cool. “Hanji—”

“It’s safe!” they promise, setting the vial down again and turning toward Marco with the syringe. He’s definitely looking a little more green than average. “I tried it out on myself. Weird, but safe. I mean, I’m still working on getting feeling back in my left butt cheek, but I didn’t need it anyway.”

I stare. Loudly. Marco sighs, though, and gives me a brave, albeit slightly wobbly smile. “It’s getting replaced anyway, right?”

This man, I swear to god. “Alright, love,” I murmur, lacing our good fingers together. He turns back to Hanji and gives them a tight little nod, and they grin and jab the damn needle right into his busted, still-bruised knee without any further hesitation. About as sterile as Hanji gets, I suppose. I wince and get up to grab an alcohol wipe from the cart, at least.

While I’m wiping Marco’s new puncture wound down and giving him a bandaid, Hanji dumps the syringe in the sharps container and turns back to the fucking metal leg thing. Oh yeah. That.

“Hanji, the fuck is that, exactly?” I ask, standing and staring down at it. 

The thing _clanks_ at me.

My eyes widen, Marco pulls his good leg up onto the bed, and Hanji laughs.

“Cursed armor!”

Taking a moment to process that, I stare at the thing for a second longer, then slowly look back up at Hanji.

“What.”

The leg clanks again, twice in quick succession, and Marco quickly hauls his bum leg away from it too, rolling back onto the bed with a squeak in the process.

“I think _she_ belonged to Alonso Quixano.” I stare. Hanji smiles widely. “You know, Don Quixote? The mad chivalric knight from the book?”

 _“Why?”_ I half-scream, leaning down onto my knees. I’m starting to laugh, though, already overwhelmed. I can’t even keep track of how fucking absurd my life is anymore, but I’m dating a zombie priest who’s about to wear cursed, probably insane armor as we pop into hell to visit an Old Testament demon and rescue Solomon Grundy.

Yeah, I’m cackling. I’ve lost it, I can’t help it. Marco’s cautiously peering over the edge of the bed at the leg, and Hanji’s grinning cheerfully. Right in their element, I suppose.

I collapse onto the bed and drop my head against Marco’s shoulder, my eyes watering slightly. 

“So, the armor is alive,” Hanji starts, talking over the lady-leg’s noisy contributions. _She_ taps her metal heel irritably. “And since Marco’s leg is essentially a noodle, she’s gonna be your new one for now.”

Marco stares up at Hanji, sweating slightly. “Um. Hanji, I, uh. I have to admit that I’m a little nervous.”

“Don’t worry, she’s not as cuckoo as she was when Quixote was wearing her. No windmills. She’s just here to take over functioning and get you through this mission.”

“For what price?” Marco replies, nervously glancing down at her. Smart man.

“Oh, don’t worry about that, I’ve got it covered.” Hanji picks the leg up, wrestling her apparent displeasure at being lifted again. “She _loves_ gold.”

Marco seems wildly unconvinced. “What’s she cursed with?”

“Maybe _cursed_ is a bad word.” Hanji holds the leg out at arm’s length, considering her with a squint. “I would say she’s been gifted with a vibrant personality.”

She ceases struggling at that. Apparently flattery soothes the leg.

My roaring laughter hurts my broken ribs a lot, but I can’t fucking help it. This is some straight up Joss Whedon bullshit. ‘Absurd’ doesn’t even begin to cover it. Marco pokes his lower lip out at me, so I try really hard to stop, but I have been sleeping for days and I have cabin fever and we have _Don Quixote’s leg._ I’m gonna _piss_ myself.

“Will she let me go when this is done?”

“Oh, yeah, that’s part of my deal with her,” Hanji says, setting the leg back down next to the bed. She clanks haughtily and stamps, and I think I’m gonna puncture another lung if she keeps this shit up in hell. “She has to behave for as long as you require her, and she can only be released from her curse with a certain gold coin, which I’ve put somewhere _very_ safe.”

“So safe even you don’t know where it is?” I deadpan, leaning up on my elbows. 

“It’ll come to me,” they whisper, waving a hand.

Marco stares down at the leg, blinking rapidly as he considers his incredibly minimal options. After a moment, he looks back up at Hanji and asks, “Does she have a name?”

Hanji nods proudly. “Dulcinea.” The leg shifts on the floor, a slightly less cranky sound than most others, if at all possible. “She can carry your weight and she’ll learn your stride pattern in no time, so don’t you worry about that. She won’t feel heavy, either. Just trust her. She won’t do you wrong.”

Swallowing audibly, Marco sits up and pushes his bum leg off the bed, cautiously reaching his good foot down and poking _Dulcinea_ with his toe. He jumps when she shifts, but his bravery once again shines through when he reaches determinedly for the rolled-up socks at the end of the bed.

“You gonna wear her under your pants, love? She’s metal, and all.” 

“Oh, right,” Hanji chirps, reaching back to retrieve Marco’s pants. “She doesn’t like men touching her, even when they’re wearing her, so put your pants on first and tuck them into her.”

I raise my eyebrows. “She’s a _gay_ leg?”

Hanji shrugs. “She has her preferences.” Dulcinea clanks her vibrant agreement. I run a hand down my face and wheeze out more laughter, flopping back onto the bed. I should hire someone to write my biography or something. Marco gets his socks on, mumbling something about the green shit finally going to work on his knee, and he lets me help stuff his now-lifeless right leg into his pants. Hanji reaches into Dulcinea and pulls out a weird black knit thing, I guess meant to cover up over Marco’s knee.

As I tuck the hem of Marco’s jeans down into his sock, I look up at him and ask, “Ready, love?” He sighs, scratching the back of his neck. I rub my palm soothingly over his thigh and give him a warm smile.

“I wish I could say I’ve done weirder,” Marco admits, chewing on his thumbnail. “But I think this might be a record.” He shifts to the edge of the bed, though, and uses his hand to help lift his limp leg up over her. “Are _you_ ready, D-Dulcinea?”

She clanks, not too irritably, before she stills.

Marco braces himself, then lets his foot slide into the leg, his jaw twitching from nervously gritting his teeth. Hanji stretches the knit around his calf, letting Marco wiggle into her, and slides it up over his knee, and Dulcinea is equipped.

I somehow manage to contain more giggles.

Hanji and I stand up, looking down at Dulcinea, but she’s being rather well-behaved. She adjusts, probably moving Marco’s numb foot around, then taps her toes a few times. Marco jumps, gripping the edge of the bed.

“Oh, man, that’s _really_ weird,” he wheezes, peering up at me. “I don’t even know how to describe it.”

“Can you feel anything?” Hanji asks, leaning down to poke around his knee. He shakes his head, and they straighten back up, obviously pleased. “The anesthetic should make it easy for you to stand up and be moved around by her, but it also lets her tap into your muscles without your brain going haywire and resisting. She’s totally hacking your leg.”

He smiles a little, murmuring, “How sci-fi.” Marco reaches his hand toward me, and I help him to his feet, letting him slip his arm around my shoulders for support. Dulcinea taps again, but this time, Marco twitches and exhales sharply.

“Hey, you okay?” I ask quickly, locking my arm around his waist for support.

“Yeah, it’s. Um.” He looks at me out of the corner of his eye, then takes a deep breath. “She’s _talking_ to me.”

“Isn’t her voice lovely?” Hanji sighs, shooting a wide grin at us. I guess that explains how they knew so much about her. “She’s really very pleasant, just, uh. Well, no offense,” they say cautiously, their next words directed at the leg. “But you can be a little loud at times. Also, she switches between English and Spanish pretty much constantly.”

“I’m discovering this, yes,” Marco says, his eyes wandering slightly. Probably trying to remember his Spanish. I blink down at her, my free hand resting lightly on Marco’s stomach. “She, um. She wants me to walk around a little, I guess,” he continues, sliding his arm off my shoulder. I let him pull away, hovering obnoxiously in case he falls, but he seems to adjust surprisingly well. 

While he totters around the room, every other step loud and metallic, I look back over at Hanji. They smile at me, moving to pack up their tool kit thing. “Hey, uh,” I start, stuffing my good hand into my pocket. “You think you could reverse engineer that too? Make him some sort of lightly-cursed brace or something?”

They hum quietly, zipping up their duffel bag with an echoing clatter from somewhere far below. “I think the knee replacement will be the better option,” they say finally, turning back to me. “The anesthetic will reverse itself as he wears her, so don’t worry about that.”

I squint, biting my lip idly. “The leg’s not cursed, is it.”

Hanji sighs and shakes their head, looking over at Marco. “No. Haunted.” Of course. “Part of my deal with her, and the thing that’s keeping her so compliant, is that I promised to free her once we have Eren back and Asmodeus is taken care of.”

It really pisses me off that my heart just twinged a little in pity for a goddamn haunted _leg,_ but there it is. Add that to the list of ‘things I never expected to feel.’ Damn this job.

After an awkward moment, Hanji stuffs their hands in their pockets and mumbles, “Bad lie, I know. I didn’t think Marco would approve, though.”

I just shrug. Marco won’t approve, that’s for sure, but if I know his clever ass he’ll have it figured out anyway within the hour. He’s _good_ at this job. Way better than anyone could have anticipated. Of course, that also means that within the hour, he’ll start feeling bad for using a spirit to his own end. Hopefully she’s not the pity-party type.

Marco moves back over us, talking to Dulcinea in quiet Spanish. He’s already getting the hang of it. Natch, his steps are still heavy and he’s still got a limp, but he’s mobile, and that’s what we need. He smiles widely up at me, biting his lip almost excitedly.

Kinda can’t blame him. He’s more mobile than he’s been in years, by and large.

A twinge of guilt runs through me, but Marco catches it before it sparks by winding our fingers together again and kissing my forehead gently.

Hanji’s watch beeps, and they perk up, swinging their ridiculous bag over their shoulder. “You two ready to bust out?”

\--

We wheel Marco out in a wheelchair so he can keep a sheet over Dulcinea. The way he’s smiling kind of tells me that she’s _highly_ displeased about this, and possibly yammering into his brain, but he’s tolerating it with a brand of grace only Marco can.

Sneaking into Old Trost once we get there is disturbingly easy. No news crews or helicopters, no security, nothing. Just a sign saying that the ‘attraction is temporarily sealed due to compromised structural integrity.’ Yeah, whatever. We go in through the office once Hanji picks the lock, and once again, we find ourselves roaming the streets of this fucking awful place.

At least I don’t have to sprint. My hackles are raised, though, because aside from Marco’s footsteps, it’s _really_ fucking quiet. 

The whispers are gone. So is the spirit static. No changes in air pressure or temperature, no shadows moving in the dark, no creaks of splintering boards or far-off glass breaking, no screams or laughs or death echoes. Just pure, unadulterated, _crushing_ silence.

I’m reminded too fucking strongly of my nightmares. God, they seem like they were so long ago. The drowning, Grisha Jaeger, the King’s Pride... all of it just got swept away once Eren’s devil came out. 

Shaking my head, I try to focus my wandering thoughts. Now isn’t the time.

We make our way through the frozen streets toward the sinkhole, where the others are waiting. It’s still twilight, but the shadow of the walls sucks all the dying sunlight right out of this place. I don’t understand how anyone could ever bring themselves to live here. They must’ve felt like fucking cattle. This is the price Solomon paid, though, for safety. This, and the gaping hells under our feet.

My mind wanders again, back to Solomon’s journal.

I hadn’t said anything about it, but my eyes had hovered on a shaky scrawl in the lower corner of the page with Asmodeus’s picture. Scratched frantically in splattering ink, so hard that the tip of his pen had pierced the page, three sentences in _Aramaic_ of all things.

_We are damned._  
 _God forgive us._  
 _God forgive me._

When we get to the sinkhole, Armin and Mikasa are already wearing their collars, presumably waiting until moonrise to take their clothes off and turn. My fingers are still crossed that the curse beats out the moon, but I guess we’ll find out. Levi’s smoking idly, standing way too close to the edge of the sinkhole for anyone’s comfort. There’s a lame sign a few feet from the edge warning against coming near, but otherwise nothing. Not even caution tape.

Hanji drops their duffel bag and forages around in it again, much more successfully now that they’re not searching for something that likes to put up a fight. They brought weapons, it seems, and in abundance, all shiny silver. Everyone gets a handgun except the wolves and Marco, who has never liked them much. Levi, Hanji, and Marco get swords, I thankfully get a knife and the stupid cursed key, wrapped in a handkerchief. 

I have to say, actually being prepared for a job weapons-wise feels extremely weird. We even get fancy holsters for everything, military-grade. Like a goofy training montage or some shit. I guess I’m more used to making shit up as I go. Maybe that’s why I’m always getting my ass kicked. 

If I wasn’t a ball of acid-reflux-ridden anxiety, I’d probably think Marco with a sword and an automail leg is hot, too. I mean, he is, but I’m pretty sure my dick is retreating into my body in anticipation of this mission, so the point is moot.

“So how are we getting down there?” I ask, stuffing the gun into the thigh holster provided to me and the knife safely in the back of my pants. Just where I like it. Its weight is soothing against the small of my back, helping me breathe a little.

“I figured,” Armin pipes up, pulling a stick of chalk out of his pocket. “We could use some of the houses and alchemy to make stairs.”

“That sounds safe,” I drone, and Marco mumbles my name and gives my arm a scolding poke. Armin understands, though, and shakes my gruffness off.

“I marked out a few houses already, just in case, and I brought the sturdiest seal I could find.”

“Please tell me it can do guardrails.” The thought of going without makes me nauseous. 

“No worries there,” Armin says reassuringly. He gestures to the thick, straight chalk lines drawn from a good few beat-down houses to a central circle beside the sinkhole, waiting to be filled in with the alchemical seal. “There should be more than enough material here, too.”

“Are you guys changing up here?” He nods up at me, giving me a brave smile. 

Levi appears beside us, startling the bejeezus out of me. Fuck, I’m already on edge, this can’t be good. I run my hand through my hair as he says, “Let’s move.”

“Do we know what we’re doing down there?” I ask nervously.

“Play it by ear.”

I guess Levi catches my butthurt expression, because he pauses for a moment, then gives me a rough pat on the shoulder. The one that’s still kinda cranky from getting dislocated. Ow.

Armin shuffles over to draw in his seal and Levi moves to harass Hanji about something, so I turn to Marco and lean my forehead into his shoulder with a grouse.

“How’s it going, love?” he asks quietly, wrapping his arm around my shoulders. His thin, sheathed sword sways off his hip, really the only weapon he can use one-handed. It’s too bad. I know for a fact that he prefers spear-type things, like our poor missing harpoon. 

Turning my head slightly, I reach up to play with his cross. He never did replace it. It’s still cracked up the long stem, cleanly enough that the wood hasn’t started splintering yet. He always wears it out when we’re on jobs, rather than under his shirt. I’ve gotten used to it. Comforted by it, even, which is weird.

Somehow, Marco’s bulletproof Christian faith hasn’t ever been an issue for me. I mean, I’ve grown up since that time, and I learned how to tell the difference between faith as a comfort and faith as a knife. Even the old hymns that Marco hums sometimes don’t set me off anymore, nor the prayers he says to himself whenever he damn well feels like it. He’s never adjusted his faith for me, and I wouldn’t ever ask him to, even if it makes me sweat on the few bad days I still have.

I think Marco’s catching onto the fact that Christianity makes me nervous, though. He’s never asked, and he never pushes, but somehow he always knows when he’s approaching a line and makes to change the subject or pull me into a soft, sweet kiss or whatever.

I suppose one day I’ll have to tell him about my brother. Everything. I don’t _want_ to, but.

Marco and I, we have this unspoken rule. Neither of us really discuss our pasts in any great detail. They’re fucking minefields as it is, and overall, we’re not terribly concerned with them. The future’s way more important, as is the present. We are who we are. It’s fine.

He’s curious, though, and I can see it. Patient through to the end of time and back again, and as respectful of my boundaries as I try to be of his, but still curious.

I’m still fiddling with his cross when he murmurs my name questioningly, pressing warm kisses through my hair. I lean up and catch his lips, wrapping my arms around his waist and holding him close. He’s nice and warm. It’s getting colder as we lose daylight, faster than I’m really comfortable with. Damn winter. 

“You know I love you, Marco,” I mumble against his lips, peering up into his dark, pretty eyes. They crinkle slightly as he smiles and nods, repeating the words to me. “No matter what,” I tack on, same as always, and he nods again and nuzzles me soothingly.

Armin hollers to let us know he finished the seal, and I let Marco step back so we can both watch. Marco hasn’t gotten to see much alchemy before, let alone _good_ alchemy. I may be great at dissections, but I can’t admit to ever being great at chemical synthesis. Really, that’s all alchemy is. Chemistry with a supernatural catalyst. Also hard as shit, but whatever. I have other skills.

We hold hands and watch as Armin pricks his finger, standing carefully back and working a good drop of blood to the surface. He lets it drip onto the seal, then hops back a few steps until he’s by Mikasa’s side, and we all take a moment to appreciate Armin’s magic.

I imagine I’d comment on how he’s got an almost artistic hand, but the thing about alchemy is that it’s also _extremely_ loud. 

Everyone covers their ears to block out the _shriek_ of wood shattering. The houses he’d picked basically explode into contained spheres, bound by the markings, bolts of lightning flickering violently between wooden beams and wrapping around metal piping in showers of blindingly bright sparks. The warping, twisting materials bolt out along Armin’s guidelines and delve into the sinkhole, deafening and _wicked_ fast, more than a little dangerous. The stairs form smoothly, though, and the electric cacophony starts fading out as the storm sinks further into the abyss.

After a long while, there’s a loud _crunch,_ a lot of wood splintering that echoes up from below. Hanji scoots forward quickly and looks down, squinting toward the bottom, before they reach out and scuff out part of the seal with their boot.

Immediately, the rest of the dismantled house bits drop, and the ancient city is still once more.

“Wow, Armin, that’s _great,_ ” Hanji babbles, reaching over to test the (thankfully sturdy-looking) guardrails. “And it’s a perfect spiral too, nice and broad all the way down.”

Armin grins proudly, nodding his thanks as he runs a hand through his hair. Ever bashful. Mikasa rests her hand on his shoulder, earning a broad smile and a kiss brushed against her cheek. Losers.

“That’s really cool,” Marco breathes, scratching his head and turning to me again. “Makes things way easier, too.”

Levi pulls his sword out, looking pointedly up at the sky, and the smile falls from my face. 

“We’ve gotta move,” I mumble reluctantly. The cloth-bound key rattles against my chest, probably just making itself known. Like I don’t have a gnarled, stitched-up mess of cuts from it all across my shoulder. 

“You’re right,” Armin replies, shedding his coat. Mikasa’s already halfway stripped, completely unconcerned for either the cold or her now-bare chest. “That was loud. If there’s anything down there that was asleep, no way it still is.”

I turn back to Marco for one more soft, slow kiss, running my hand down his cheek as I do. He catches my fingers in his and squeezes.

Then it’s game-face.

Mikasa turns first, a subtle grimace melting into her wolf’s face as her bones crack and knit, as she grows hair and teeth and generally undergoes the grotesque mutations that being a werewolf entails. Her neck fills into the collar, just tight enough to reassure me that it won’t slip off, until her fur grows out and mostly covers it. She falls onto all fours and shivers, hunching into the blinding, blood-curdling agony of turning. 

Armin’s halfway through, but he’s always been worse at hiding his pain. His soft whimpers pitch down into low, growling whines, and the cracks of his joints are loud and fucking _nauseating._ I haven’t had to watch him turn in years. I’d forgotten how gross it is.

Marco’s turned away respectfully, his hand covering his mouth. He’s still a little pale, though.

Once her pain’s past, Mikasa pads over to Armin and licks his ears soothingly, letting him work through too until he’s shaking his shaggy head with a weird little puppy sound and standing on all fours.

The full moon’s just starting to peek over the massive wall, creeping like a giant face peering down at us as its light dyes the scene deathly pale. We’re all watching anxiously, more than a few hands subtly resting on weapons as Mikasa and Armin stand upright and stretch their terrifyingly powerful wolf bodies.

A minute passes, then another. Long and painfully slow, thick with nervousness.

Armin looks down at his paws after a moment, blinking wide, dark wolf eyes, before he looks up and stares directly into the moon without flinching.

“Oh thank god,” I whisper, deflating with a loud sigh. Marco nods, letting his hand relax from where he’d had it pressed against his stomach. Even Dulcinea seems to unwind, her plates rattling slightly between us.

Levi peers at us over his shoulder, waiting until Hanji’s settled in next to me, slinging their heavy crossbow over their shoulder, to turn back to the wolves and gesture them forward.

They lumber into the darkness, the stairs strong under their massive weight. Once they’ve descended a bit, Levi follows without another glance, and then it’s our turn.

I swallow anxiously. My mouth runs dry.

Here we go.

\--

Our literal descent into hell is obnoxiously quiet, but for the creaks of the wolves clambering down the shallow stairs and Marco’s rhythmic clanking. It gets warmer as we go, so I pull off my thick hoodie and leave it carelessly on the smooth banister. Either I’ll come back for it or I won’t, simple as that.

My stomach churns.

None of us know what we’re getting into. We don’t know what’s down there, who’s down there, whether Asmodeus is skulking around or asleep... fuck, we don’t even know what’s inside Eren. Just that it’s bad news.

I try to keep my shit together as we descend, but the further we go, the more antsy I get. I can hear _something_ down there, some kind of slow movement filtering up through the bone-shattering silence. It just sets me on edge. Even watching the metronome sway of Hanji’s messy ponytail doesn’t soothe me. This place is evil.

It _smells,_ too. Like... like burnt ashes, like decaying meat, like long-stale air sitting thick and still and undisturbed for centuries. Like a serial killer arsonist’s fucking musty basement. I hate this place and I can’t even see the ground yet.

Levi hangs back until he comes level with me, adjusting his grip on his sword idly. “The priority is Eren,” he says shortly, not waiting for a reply before he continues. “Leave everything else.”

Hanji smiles grimly over their shoulder. “Don’t talk to strangers, either.”

I roll my eyes, rubbing the back of my neck. “What if Asmodeus finds us first?”

“Assuming he doesn’t already know we’re here, we’ll just have to be cautious,” Levi drones. He looks like he’s itching for a cigarette. That makes two of us. “Be ready for a fight.” 

He speeds up again, rejoining the hairy-ass combat squad, leaving me to grumble to myself.

The moon is starting to crest over the sinkhole, it seems, because thin, weak moonbeams cut through the dense air and shed a little light on what we’re dealing with. It looks exactly like I’d imagined. Worse yet, we’re almost there. 

The hell under Old Trost is an impossibly ancient, ruined city of men, pulled deep beneath the earth to amuse an isolated devil. It almost looks like it’s been untouched since Solomon cursed it. Short stone buildings, splintered debris scattered over filthy, uneven black bedrock, lame watchtowers tilted haphazardly in all directions... like it all literally fell into this pit. 

The crumbling houses that Eren had pulled down with him lie broken across rooftops and blown through narrow, jagged streets. Nothing but matchsticks now.

I wonder what became of Eren.

As my heart pounds, I reach back and grip the handle of my knife, letting it soothe me. Marco lays his hand on my shoulder, easing the growing ache in my chest, before he pulls away again with a gentle squeeze.

I can see Levi leaning over and examining the layout of the city as we descend, sharp eyes glancing around for any signs of movement. I hope to god he hears it too, the shuffling I’ve been hearing for a while now. As we grow closer, and as I listen hard, I find with no small degree of horror that the sound is slow, even scratching.

Something down there is _scratching._

I feel like I’m gonna puke.

Armin and Mikasa tentatively take the first steps off the stairs, settling back down on all fours. They’re more graceful this way, faster and quieter, but still almost shoulder-height on me and a thousand times more powerful. They sniff around tentatively, sampling the air for anything that isn’t fucking dry rot, then look back at the rest of us on the stairs. I guess there’s nothing horrible _immediately_ waiting for us, not by their standards.

Levi turns back to us and, in short, silent gesturing, indicates that we should follow the scratching sound. Fucking great. I’m glad I wasn’t starting to hear shit already, but that doesn’t mean I wanna go shake anyone’s fucking gnarly scratchy hand about it. Still, it’s the best option we have right now, which bodes about as well as it sounds. I draw my knife, nodding shakily, and Levi turns and gestures the wolves forward.

They already know where to head, I guess, with all their keen canine senses. They pad through the dead streets, sniffing quietly and leading the rest of us lost little lambs toward the only plausible sign of life there is. My mouth is still dry. Marco walks beside me as quietly as he possibly can, his sword drawn and his lips pressed into a thin line, already breaking a sweat of his own. It’s _hot_ down here, and that only makes the smell fucking worse. 

I elect not to look around as we move. I want to remember as few details about this shithole as I possibly can. God knows I’ll be having nightmares about this place, even if things go as smooth as can be. This place feels _wrong,_ so fucking wrong, and it’s making me dizzy with its badly-concealed madness, its ringing silence. I just stare at Hanji’s tense back, at their cautious grip on their crossbow, at whatever’s directly in front of me at any given moment.

As the moonlight grows stronger, we creep after the wolves, edging through busted streets and around and over broken rocks and splintered wood that don’t even bear spiderwebs as a sign of life. Just... dead.

Except for the scratching. Which is getting louder and scratchier, nails on a fucking chalkboard, slow and gnawing and it makes my teeth grind and my stomach clench and my head _hurt._

We hike up a steep, jagged hill, sharp bedrock catching the toes of my boots and threatening to send me tumbling back down, and when we reach the top we find the sound’s coming from some sort of open square down below. We all duck behind a dangerously-leaning stone building, letting Levi size it up from up here. 

He doesn’t look around the corner for long before he stands up straight, brow furrowed, and just fucking marches balls-out down into the dimly-lit courtyard, Jesus Christ. I hiss after him, leaning around the corner, but he’s determined. The wolves pad after him. Armin’s tail is starting to tuck itself between his legs. Hanji stays behind with me and Marco and watches.

The rough walls around the courtyard are lit with a weird, unsteady orange light, shimmering and flickering as if it’s being reflected off of water. It shifts darker and then lighter, like a huge fire, and the scratching sound is starting to reach a fever pitch in my ears. My eye twitches. I rub my ears harshly, knocking the heel of my hand against my head to try and clear the frantic, tinny ringing starting to bubble up from somewhere dark.

Hanji tugs on my sleeve and gestures for us to follow them down, so I guess whatever’s over there is harmless. Fucking _annoying,_ but harmless.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but this isn’t it.

We all stand around it, staring down at it and trying to ignore the heat radiating in waves off the ground.

Before I can open my big mouth, Hanji lowers their crossbow and breathes, “That’s... Asmodeus.”

I look at them, then back at the scratchy bastard, and silently wonder if they’ve lost it.

I’d pictured this asshole the way Solomon drew him. You know, a huge, pissy, gelatinous pile of weird animal parts, powerful and theoretically terrifying. 

What I get instead is just a wispy, naked dude. Almost skeletal, with long, ratty black hair, slumped limp against a big broken chunk of building. He’s nailed to the stone by a huge, jagged obsidian blade speared through his narrow throat, thick, congealing blood dripping slowly down his sagging skinbag of a torso. Every part of him is atrophied and weak, and looks like it hasn’t moved in centuries but for his right hand, which is slowly, _achingly_ scratching into the black earth. Constantly moving, cracked, bloody nails picking and digging at the infected edges of what I now recognize as a rift.

The light and the heat and the _stench_ are all coming from that festering tear in reality. I don’t want to look into it. God only knows what I’d find.

I’m determined to not let this place fuck with my head.

After a long, tense pause, Skeletor doesn’t lunge at us, and nothing tackles us from behind, and it’s all extremely awkward and weird. I rub the back of my neck and look over at Levi. Armin and Mikasa cover us while we try to figure out what to do here.

It doesn’t take long for someone to lose it, and shockingly, it’s not me. Hanji fucking _growls,_ readying their crossbow again, and they plug a bolt straight through the bastard’s hand and nail it to his dried-out thigh. That takes care of the noise.

Asmodeus’s fingers keep moving, which is disgusting on its own, but his neck cracks like fucking _fireworks_ as he leans his head back against the stone in jittery, ataxic twitches. I gag slightly. His eyes are hollow, sunken and pure white, sightless and not at the same time. 

I don’t know how he speaks, given his state of near-decapitation, but he does, and his voice is raspy and ancient and pathetic as hell, almost too dusty to hear.

_“Kill me.”_

Cheerful. 

Levi clicks his tongue irritably, choosing to look around us rather than engage the demon.

_“Kill me before he returns.”_

My eyebrows shoot up. I know Hanji told me not to talk to strangers, but I think I can take this jerk in a pinch. “Who? Eren? Where is he?”

_“I am all that remains. The last of the seventy-two. He will devour me, and with my power become the cataclysm.”_

Resoundingly unhelpful, not like I’d expected anything less. Still, a chill curls down my spine. “Who is _he,_ exactly?”

His decrepit mouth drops open to answer, but the sound of Armin whining urgently behind me distracts me from his response and sets every alarm bell in my head screaming. Knees knocking, I turn around.

All I can see is a silhouette atop the hill, black as night against the pale moonlight from so far above. A figure curled in on themselves, shoulders heaving like they’re struggling to breathe, and primal animal _terror_ clenches in my gut and freezes me from the inside. I almost don’t hear Asmodeus’s trembling whisper over the white noise filling my skull.

_“God-eater.”_

The figure staggers down the slope, tripping and clutching their stomach and _whimpering_. The wolves stand between me and them, rearing up on their hind legs, but they’re both shivering and whining.

I shake my head weakly.

_Wrong._

My body quakes as Eren stumbles into the fiery light, his face filthy and smeared with blood, his eyes huge, desperate, shining with tears, and his horrified stare locks onto mine as he raggedly gasps, “S-stop me—”

I’m frozen to the ground. 

“Stop me, I’m—he’s gonna eat him—”

_“Kill me!”_

The air warps around me, buzzing and humming, and my gaze is trapped on Eren, who repeats himself in a cracking shriek, even as he moves closer, closer, twitching unnaturally. I’m so dizzy. I can’t move.

“E-Eren,” I choke, unable to look away. 

He’s bleeding from his side, from where Marco had pierced him with the harpoon, but his pitch-black hands tear at his bare stomach, claw-like nails leaving gory slashes across his bruised skin.

Hanji moves first. They reload their crossbow and fire a bolt through Eren’s knee, forcing him to kneel, and when his eyes squeeze shut the rest of us are released. Armin and Mikasa converge on him, wrapping their monstrous paws around his arms, and Levi bolts in front of him, leveling the tip of his sword to the hollow of Eren’s throat. Marco keeps guard on Asmodeus, his own blade pressed to the demon’s temple, and somehow I manage to move too.

The world tilts as I struggle closer, shakily pulling the key off over my head. It’s hot, so hot, and the air is too thick to breathe, but I move forward, sweat-slick hands fumbling uselessly at the knot in the leather strand. Eren’s gasping for breath too, every laboring, rattling wheeze breaking open the filthy gash in his ribs. I give up on the knot as I come to a stop in front of him, fighting away rising panic, and his eyes slide open just as I fucking stupidly pull the handkerchief off the key.

I see the thin brass glint in the firelight, reflected in his huge, watery eyes.

His pupils widen, tremble, and then blow out and cover every part of his eyes, and that’s when he stops breathing.

It no longer matters that he’s being held down by two full-grown werewolves. He stands like they’re nothing, whipping one arm back first, then the other, and Armin and Mikasa go fucking _flying._ Levi lunges with his sword, but Eren moves too fast to see. He grabs the blade, face blank like stone, and he shatters it in his blackened fist. Bolts scream just past my head, piercing Eren’s chest in little sprays of thick blood that drip and seep down his stomach, but he just looks down at them and fucking _yanks them out._

I stand there, petrified, helpless, while the world twists and breaks around us, and Eren’s hellish eyes meet mine once more, fierce bursts blooming dark like blood where his pupils ought to be.

“Eren,” I think I gasp, his madness gnawing into my skull and scratching into my brain, and he _smiles_ and tilts his head. The moonlight bends in fractals above him, quivering and melting into the shapes of huge, thorned fucking _antlers_ rising out of his skull, thick with cobwebs and twinkling like stars.

When he opens his mouth, his voice is gone and his teeth are blackened razors, and he makes this _fucking awful_ sound, like a rattlesnake crackling deafeningly in my ears and my chest and my brain, migraine-inducing and laced with pure, malicious, ancient evil.

_‘e ren’s no t here a nym ore’_

I sink to my knees, staring feebly up at him, unable to think or breathe or scream.

_Godeater._

He’s going to kill me.

His eyes narrow in pure _glee,_ and even though I’m hyperventilating I _cannot breathe,_ and he’s going to fucking slaughter me right here, I know it, I know it I know it—

_‘p athetic’_

Silently, he strides past me. His footprints steam on the bedrock, black tar bubbling under every steady step. I am an ant unworthy of his time or his attention. A worm for him to toy with later, to cut into tinier and tinier pieces until it stops squirming, and in his wake the world _shudders_ and spasms and cracks, reality bleeding away to reveal the chaos underneath, dark and awful, and I can’t stop sobbing.

Weak. Useless.

While my failing, oxygen-deprived muscles still work, I look over my shoulder, watching as he reaches his dagger hands toward Levi and Hanji, and whatever the fuck he does to them leaves them both crumpled on the hot earth. He steps delicately across the raging inferno of the rift and stands over Asmodeus. Marco’s crouched beside them, curling in on himself, hand fisted tight in his hair as he rocks back and forth.

Godeater brushes his hand over the hilt of the lightning blade jutting out of Asmodeus’s throat, tiny, deathly little lights glittering at the pointed tips of his fingers, before he wraps them around it and yanks the sword out of the stone. Before Asmodeus can even think to move, the blade’s carving sickly through his delicate ribs, serrated obsidian cleaving him open sloppy and horrifying, and when he pulls it back, Godeater reaches down into the gaping hole and fucking _tears out Asmodeus’s heart._

He seems to twitch, though, his back tight and his stomach tensing, trying to throw him off balance. Eren’s body heaves with its last attempt to resist the evil controlling it, but Godeater overcomes the death throes and rolls his shoulders.

I watch, the world dissolving into violence around me, as he sinks his jagged fangs into the shriveled, bloody meat and fucking devours every last withered bit.

Something in him _pulses._

He cracks his neck and straightens his back, his terrible horns glimmering in the bloodstained light as he stands tall, and the pressure in my chest explodes into an aching chasm.

We fucked up.

 _I_ fucked up.

He turns to look at me over his shoulder, black eyes shining with mirth, before he flicks Asmodeus’s rotten blood off of his blade and fucking phases out of existence, leaving a gaping void like a black hole in his wake.

I fucked up.

My desert mouth works uselessly as I flop around and try to crawl toward my fallen comrades, toward Marco, but the ground crackles into ashes under my knees and threatens to send me plummeting deeper into the howling abyss. A crack ruptures across the rock in front of me, an earthquake fault rattling into my very being and splitting open the foundation of the earth, heat and fire and sparks erupting out of it.

It thunders around me, the earth’s breaking, until I’m isolated in an island of fire that boils the air from my lungs and burns my frantic hands, searching desperately for some way out, _there has to be a way out, I’m scared—_

_I’m alone._

Sobbing like the frail little creature I am, I whip around, searching, staring, gasping, until I manage to haul myself to my feet and crack out a scream for help, a shrill plea for someone to risk their fucking life to come save mine, and when I turn back toward the hill, there’s a face right fucking in mine.

A face I swore I’d never see again.

I’m sinking.

No, please, please, he can’t be—

 _“Demon,”_ he rasps, his lips curled back in a snarl, hateful eyes narrowed and burning through me as he looms over me, forcing me back to my knees. _“You murdered her.”_

Tears spill down my cheeks. I try to shake my head, but he _growls,_ and I flinch so hard the world spins again.

I stare up into the rage-twisted face of my older brother as he breathes hard, stinking of sour alcohol, a broken bottle clenched in his shaking fist.

Isaac pulls his hand back, ready to drive splintered glass into me, and just like last time, I close my eyes and wait for the blow to land.

My fault.


	6. To Ashes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's all in my head. It is. It has to be.
> 
> Please, please... let this all be in my head...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)
> 
>  
> 
> **please be cautious about spoilers**

I am ten years old again, standing on a stoop I know too well, and even though this badly-painted door leads into the house I lived in before, I know by the looks on my father’s and my brother’s faces that it will never again be my home.

My ever-loving mother rushes out and folds me into her trembling embrace instantly, sobbing into my tiny shoulder, and Levi quietly fabricates something semi-believable about coma states. None of my family will catch his lie.

My father thanks Levi with tight lips and a crushing handshake, his golden cross glinting against his black funeral suit, and my brother watches from the shadows of the hallway.

Latent psychic tendencies run through the men in my family. So do depression, substance abuse, and desperate religion.

My brother and my father could sense Christa’s darkness in me, but no one ever taught them the difference between dark and evil.

\--

“You don’t fool me, _devil,_ ” he hisses in the gloomy hallway between our rooms, every part of him wreathed in shade but his snarl-bared teeth and the rhythmic glint of his golden, swaying cross. “Why did you come here?”

“I-Isaac,” I whisper, my tiny hands fidgeting with the crumpled hem of my shirt and leaving it damp with panicked sweat. My child heart pounds, and every beat carries with it a dark pulse that slowly robs the hallway of what light remains. My protest, as usual, means nothing to my brother, who battles his demons with the bare hope that God can provide him.

“You tricked my mother into welcoming _evil_ into this house,” he growls, stepping forward, and I curl further into the wall and stare down between his bare feet. “Why? _Tell me why._ ”

All I can do is cry.

Cry, cry, cry.

I am not allowed to forget my sins.

I brought damnation to this place, and every blasphemous tick of my dead heart brings my family one step closer to hellfire.

My fault.

\--

By the time my mother is diagnosed with brain cancer, she is already dying. I am fifteen. Isaac is twenty. He drops out of college and finds a few local jobs, and it takes less than a day for me to realize that the two years he was out of the house were the last peaceful ones I’ll have until I can leave this awful place.

Isaac blames me with every breath. Her tumors are born of my unholy grasp.

As she grows sicker, it becomes harder and harder for my mother to stand up for me, so I spare her the burden. I avoid her so she doesn’t have to protect me. Isaac can’t contain himself enough around her, can’t even have the damn respect to _pretend_ for her.

Five months later, my mother is dead.

\--

“You have our sincerest condolences,” says the stiff lab coat before he turns and walks away, leaving me standing isolated in this crowded waiting room. The white tile between my dirty chucks is obscenely bright, and the sickly fluorescent light reflects off the splattered little pool of tears dripping from my quaking chin.

That night is the worst it’s ever been.

Isaac is drunk again, and my father is getting there, and now there’s no one to stop my brother from screaming damnation right into my tear-flushed face. Mad with grief, he rips me open with his religion for what feels like days while my father sinks ever deeper into the couch, and even while he’s pretending to be neutral, I can see it in his face.

He agrees.

“You rose from hell to _murder my mother_ —” Isaac bellows, his grip tightening around the neck of his near-empty bottle. “ _You murdered her!_ ”

My protest is weak, and the sound of glass shattering against the table smothers it before it’s even left my mouth.

Isaac slowly tightens his grip on the dripping, jagged bottle, hell in his eyes and drunken perdition on his lips, and the world shudders to a stop around me.

No one ever taught Isaac the difference between dark and evil, so to him they are one and the same.

For a fleeting moment, some tiny living part of me insists that if I am darkness, then he must be evil, but my mother’s dying smile behind a plastic oxygen mask wipes away any thought except the soft realization that Isaac is going to kill me. 

Revenge for the life I took.

Isaac pulls back and makes to swing the splintered bottle at me, but my father’s hand catches his wrist and jolts the thing out of his grasp. A beat passes across what feels like a century before the ringing in my ears parts around my father’s words. 

“I don’t know what you are,” he rumbles, his voice gravelly and whiskey-thick as he turns to face me, “But you look just like the little boy I lost.”

Cry, cry, cry. It’s all I can do. My bony knees rattle together and snot runs out of my nose as I stand in the living room and sob, fear and grief and guilt swirling into a gutting tempest.

My father turns back to Isaac, who’s _bristling_ with homicidal fury, his hateful gaze still boring holes into my bowed skull. “ _Dad,_ mom was fine until _that thing_ brought evil into our home,” my brother spits, his nostrils flaring. “ _He_ gave her the cancer. He _killed her._ ”

Shaking his head, my father lets go of Isaac’s hand and brushes a shard of glass off of his shirt. He still doesn’t know what to say, though, even now, so he just stumbles into the kitchen.

I don’t want to be alone with him, dad, _please_ —

“It’s _your fault,_ ” Isaac snarls, hands fisting so tight they shake. “It’s your fault she’s dead.”

I can’t have, I loved her, I loved her too damn much. I don’t have proof, though. All I have is my weak, broken word, and Isaac has his scripture and his thick fucking skull. I can’t win this argument, so I don’t try. I just sob.

Cry, cry, cry.

Within the month, my brittle defense withers and dies.

“I didn’t mean to,” is all I have, and hearing those words drives Isaac into a blind, violent fury.

It doesn’t take long before he starts trying to find the core of my darkness with his fists, and all I can do is cry, cry, cry, because _I didn’t mean to._

My fault.

\-- 

I fall from one hell right back into the one I came from, bent under his will as I gasp for breath against the sweltering bedrock far beneath Old Trost.

 _“It’s your fault she’s dead,”_ Isaac spits, and the heat crashes down around me and smothers me under its vile weight. I’m _burning,_ trapped beneath this blazing conflagration while my estranged brother towers above me. He looks _exactly_ the same, right down to the disgusted sneer he doesn’t ever seem to shake when I’m around.

I’m imprisoned here with him. My own personal hell, where for my sins I am punished with the violence I thought I’d left behind a decade ago. I struggle to find a grip in the craggy, boiling rock, singeing my fingertips and my palms, _anything_ to fucking anchor myself.

I can feel myself falling.

I never could fight him.

_“And Armin, too. Your love damned him just like it damned my mother.”_

I’m so tired, so _fucking_ tired. I would give anything for this to just stop. _Anything._

It’s not like he’s wrong, either. I know I killed her, and Armin is living proof that my existence is an unholy curse. I know, I know, but he can’t resist fucking digging his salt-thick fingers into long-open wounds. I even know his next accusation before it pierces the aching hollow that was my chest.

_“If you hadn’t damned Armin, he wouldn’t be burdened with the guilt of almost exterminating you. Then Eren would never have gotten involved.”_

My sweat-slick forehead presses hard against the cracked earth, ashes smearing dark across my scabbed brow, and I’m sinking further, further, further.

 _“And **God** , what have you done to Marco?”_ My eyes crack open. _“A holy man? You **ruined** him, demon. Your evil tainted his sanctity under the guise of love. Disgusting._ ”

I know, _I know,_ and Isaac’s words wrap around me and _squeeze,_ but there’s something else under the mounting pressure, under the pain of all this guilt bearing down upon my crumbling spine.

The tiniest fleeting whisper of Marco’s breath, shaped in glittering embers like my name from his lips. I squeeze my eyes shut and draw a ragged gasp that burns like arson in my veins. An image flickers behind my eyelids. A jittering stop-motion of Marco’s smile, sweet movements of his lips long-memorized, mute words filling me up from the inside and shrugging this salted earth from my frail shoulders.

_‘I love you, Jean. No matter what.’_

This is _my_ hell. Isaac’s abuse is _my_ punishment.

I am the tiniest amalgamation of useless molecules in the known universe, but no less, I am a man falsely accused.

The first time I cough up the words, they are ripped away from me and ignite in the swirling inferno forming my confinement, and Isaac’s savage rancor is unfazed.

My good fist slams against the burning rock beneath me as my chest swells, and I lift my head from its ashen rest. The second time I heave the words, Isaac falters for a bare moment, then spits his gangrenous fury.

_“You have no power here, **devil**. Your evil can’t deliver you from me.”_

The dark pulse of my raging heart builds and then _explodes_ from within me, forcing away the fire and the guilt and the horror enough that I can stand, panting from the effort and burnt black at all my edges, sweat-slick leather tangled between my broken fingers. But I rise, and I look Isaac right in his foul fucking face, his eyes and his teeth rotted and infected with a profane violence that even he never carried.

I wipe my mouth against my arm, my cracked, bloody lips catching in cuts and scabs, and I stagger closer to him and find my voice once more.

_“I’m not evil.”_

He snarls. His skin chips away like wax in the blazing tempest, revealing festering ichor under the weakening visage of my asshole brother.

I stumble into him, fisting my good hand in his burning shirt, and I _roar_ the words right in his crackling fucking face.

_**“I’M NOT EVIL!”** _

Godeater’s eyes widen, and before he can respond, I jerk my cast-ridden arm up between us, the key swinging in the momentum and twinkling bright in his pitch eyes. Adrenaline slows reality, my brain working overtime, calculating, and when the key hits the top of its arc I throw every muscle in my body into bashing my cast into Godeater’s filthy face, brass caught between plaster and dissolving flesh in a sickening _crunch._

Isaac’s mask shatters away from boiling darkness, and Godeater’s brimstone hallucination splinters. The shards crumple and fall away into the broken universe.

His shadow melts in my hands, the curse rendering it powerless and formless, and I stare unblinking into it until its eyes roll out of existence and its demon jaw sloughs into paint across my burnt knuckles.

The moonlight grows stronger as it beams down into the sinkhole, and reality begins to mend in the wake of Godeater’s terrible shade.

When I turn, everything is as I perceived it before that douche got into my head. Marco’s on his knees, staring at me with wide, shining eyes, and Levi’s panting as he attempts to haul a slack-jawed Hanji to their feet. The wolves are limping back into the square, shaking dirt and rubble from their tangled fur.

Everyone’s alive.

Gasping for air, smooth and almost cold compared to breathing Godeater’s smoke, I fumble to get my feet in order and move to collapse in front of Marco. I rest my fingers gently on his cheeks, checking him for injury as tears pour down his face and he reaches to yank me against him with trembling hands.

“J-Jean—”

“Marco, are you okay? Did he—”

Marco buries his face in my chest and bursts into tears as he clings to me with all of his immense strength, crushing my body to his as if terrified to ever let me go. It hurts like a bitch, what with the sub-optimal condition my body’s in, but I don’t stop him. I just run my good fingers through his sweat-damp hair and wrap my other arm around his shoulders, trying to soothe him, trying to figure out what that prick did to my Marco, before I realize that Marco’s sobs are shaped around struggling words.

“Y-y-y-you n-never—t-t-told m-me—”

Confused, I lean into his ear, attempting unsuccessfully to shush him. “Never told you what, love? C’mon, Marco, talk to me—”

_“I-I-Isaac!”_

My eyes widen.

I think of that time two years ago, when I was forced to watch Melinoë torture Marco to suicide. God, what if he saw everything? All of that, all of those dark things I purposefully left in my god-awful past, buried in the black mud along with whatever secrets Marco doesn’t want to remember either...

He stammers tear-thick ‘I love you’s into my chest and clutches me tighter, repeating the words against my heart, against the sunflower gracing my sternum twined tight with the rose he has more than memorized, gasping breathlessly into the tattoo whose meaning has now become entirely clear to him.

Flowers for those whose deaths I wrought.

“Y-you’re not e-e-evil,” he chokes out, shaking his head and fisting his good hand in my shirt. “N-n-not, not evil, n-n-none of that’s y-your fault—”

“Hey, hey.” I wrestle my hands between us, easing him out of his trembling, crushing grip until he’s looking me right in the eyes, his own bloodshot and filled with pained tears. 

When I speak again, I try to give him my bravest smile, despite the anger starting to boil up from my stomach again.

_“I know.”_

His teeth dig into his lip as he nods, a fresh wave of tears cutting tracks through the dirt and ash dirtying his beautiful skin.

He buries his face against me again, and I hold him while he cries himself out.

I know from past experience. Nothing, _nothing_ hurts more than having to watch helplessly as the person you love the most crumbles under the weight of an evil they have no power to fight. Melinoë showed me that two years ago, and now Godeater’s taking a page out of her fucking book. Bastard can’t even be fucking original.

Levi comes up beside me, still breathing heavily and gripping his side with one hand while the other squeezes my shoulder. 

“Levi,” I growl, my good hand fisting in the back of Marco’s sweat-soaked shirt.

He grunts a sound of acknowledgment. I turn to stare up at him, my vengeful drive already burning a hole in my dwindling weakness.

_“I’m going to carve this motherfucker out of Eren with my bare hands.”_

\--

“I know what that thing is,” Hanji says a while later, once we’ve all gotten our wits about us and the adrenaline has settled.

The rift is still giving off that light and that heat, but I’m starting to get used to the rotting meat smell, for better or for worse. My fingers are laced tight with Marco’s, my thumb rubbing soothingly over his. He’s stopped sniffling now, already getting his game face back on. Like I said, he’s good at this.

Levi stands at Hanji’s back, keeping an eye out while we regroup. Mikasa has mine and Marco’s backs, keeping her own looming, silent guard. Armin, presumably still stuck in his wolf form until moonset, sits on his haunches beside us, looking hairy and contemplative.

Hanji pulls their hair tie out and rakes their fingers through a tangled snarl as they continue enlightening us. “Black Tamanous. I’d thought their major deity had banished all of them the last time their cycle was up, but I guess this Godeater guy dodged it somehow. They’re tricky bastards, every last one of them. Managed to fool their boss once during their creation, so it’s not all that surprising that this guy pulled the wool twice.” They sigh and tie their hair into a tight, messy bun, subtly readying themselves for combat. 

“So how do we kill him?” I grumble, still antsy. I imagine I’ll stay antsy until I know for sure Eren’s alone in his body again.

“I’m not sure,” Hanji sighs, taking the opportunity to reload their crossbow. Silver-point bolt this time, I notice. “This thing’s basically a demigod even without having lunch. He’s a celestial spirit, specifically of the cannibal variety.”

“Lovely.” I lean my head back and sigh obnoxiously, wishing desperately for a damn break. Anything will do at this point. “And if we go by what Asmodeus said—”

Hanji nods, grimacing slightly. “Yeah, it kinda sounds like he made good on the _cannibal_ part of that. I’m guessing he ate all of Solomon’s demons, which really isn’t that impressive given that all seventy-two of them suck pretty bad, but that’s still a huge amount of power he really shouldn’t have.” They sling their crossbow haphazardly over their shoulder again, whacking Levi across the arm with it as they do. He retorts by kicking them relatively gently in the back of the knee. “I’m willing to bet he doesn’t like metals of any sort. His sword is a glorified rock, and we already know silver works against him. Brass and iron would probably be effective too, but I don’t know _how_ effective.”

I hold up the key and stare at it. “This thing’s meant to keep him caged or whatever, right?”

“Yeah, but it’s meant for _him,_ not him and his seventy-two dwarves,” Hanji mumbles. I roll my eyes.

“Cute, thanks.” 

“We need a plan of some sort,” Marco says quietly, stretching his bum shoulder as best he can. His cast must weigh a ton. I squeeze his hand and let go, then pull my flannel off and set to making him a makeshift sling. “He has a serious advantage,” he continues, his brow furrowed. “He has our friend, and we don’t know where he is _or_ the layout of the city. He’s had a week to memorize it through Eren’s eyes.”

“How do we know he hasn’t left?” I lean my chin over his shoulder as I ask, tying the sleeves of my shirt in a tight knot behind his neck to support his bum arm. “Stairs aren’t that far.”

Marco shakes his head, then leans it against mine. I’m glad for the contact, honestly. “Dulcinea says he’s still down here. She’s been, um. Rather _enthusiastic_ in her insults since he revealed himself.”

“If anyone would know,” Hanji hums, crossing their arms over their thin chest, “It’d be a spirit.”

“What’s down here that he wants?” I muse, turning to look over my shoulder at Asmodeus’s cast-aside, hollowed-out corpse. The rift he’d been picking at is pretty impressive in size, easily big enough all around for Godeater and his stupid horns to go through. If he wanted to go through it, though, he just would’ve. Why’s he still dicking around down here?

“We don’t know shit about him,” Levi rumbles, lighting a cigarette as he does. “What he wants down here or anywhere else, how he survived his deity _and_ his Rest, how to get rid of him.”

“ _Thanks,_ ” I snap again, ignoring the obvious glare from the eyes in the back of his damn head. 

“How’s this for a plan,” Levi snaps right back, flicking his cigarette irately. “We find him. We incapacitate him. You put the key on him. We’ll go from there.”

“That sounds like a fucking _horrible_ plan,” I reply, basically signing my death warrant. I’m just as crabby as Levi, though, if not fucking crabbier. If I’m not mistaken, this Godeater fucker has a serious hard-on for me. I don’t know why, and I certainly do not fucking like it.

“He _is_ targeting you,” Levi replies to my private internal monologue, fuck you very much. “Stop that.”

I throw my hands in the air, turning on my heel to stand next to Mikasa and pout. She blinks her big, dark eyes at me with something approaching commiseration. When I reach up and try to scratch her ear, she does me the kindness of plopping down onto her haunches, letting me dig my fingers into her fur like some kind of therapy dog or something. I’ll accept her kindness for as long as it lasts.

“It’s... not the best plan,” comes Marco’s voice, sounding a lot like he’s chewing his nails again. Bad habit. “But it’s all we have. We’re just going to have to do our best with what we have until we can get the key onto him.”

“I don’t like not having a backup plan,” I chip in loudly.

“When do you ever have a backup plan?” Hanji laughs, so I flip them the best middle finger I can manage with my bum hand. My good hand is far too busy smooshing Mikasa’s soft-ass fur.

I look up at her and scratch idly behind her ear, watching the way her eyes move in constant sweeps, ever on the alert for danger. “Hey,” I mumble, catching her attention. At least, I think I have her ear, based on the way it twitches toward me slightly. “Can you smell him?”

She just exhales loudly. I guess not.

I pause. “Are you okay?”

Another pause, this one longer, until she blinks slowly and casts her gaze to the ground. Just for a moment. Then she’s sweeping again, but her giant wolf head leans almost imperceptibly into my scratching.

Rather than tell her it’ll be okay, or that we’ll get him back, or any of the thousand things I could tell her that I could never possibly believe, I sigh and scratch under her collar. Therapy for both of us.

“Dulcinea says she can give us a rough direction to follow,” I hear Marco say when I tune back into that conversation. “But I can’t switch to the forward team. I’m not strong enough or fast enough right now, it’ll just make things messy for you guys.”

Armin whines and snuffles, scraping his claws against the rock. Whatever he means, Mikasa doesn’t like it, immediately responding with a short, quiet bark. Not too different from her human communication.

Luckily, apparently their thoughts are in English and not Poodle, because Levi can translate for us. “Armin suggests putting the combat squad in the rear and moving one wolf into the front squad. Mikasa disagrees with splitting them up.”

“I’m tempted to agree,” Hanji muses. “Levi, what if you float to key squad for now, and the wolves hang behind us? I’m not keen on leaving the front without a beatstick, but I’m even less keen on leaving our backs unprotected.”

It seems no one has any objections. I turn over my shoulder and add, “We should set a rendezvous point in case we get split up. Just as a precaution.”

“God forbid,” Marco sighs. He throws me a shaky smile, his eyes softening when he catches me petting Mikasa. I flush slightly and stick my tongue out. “How about the stairs?” he continues, gesturing to the still-pristine staircase spiraling out of this damn place. “Then we can still make a quick escape if we need to. Plus they’re, uh. Pretty easy to find.”

I nod, tugging gently on Mikasa’s ear as I step back by Marco’s side. All of us kind of stare at each other for a moment. It feels a lot like we’re missing something, but if I think about it, we’re missing a whole fucking lot of somethings. This plan is stretched so thin around shit we don’t know that it’s basically chain link fence. More holes than not-holes.

“Okay, so to review,” I grumble. “Levi’s on key squad with me, Marco, and Hanji, Mikasa and Armin are rear squad, and we’re just. What, following Dulcinea until we casually bump into an angry cannibal demigod?”

“Well, when you say it that way,” Marco hums, nudging me with his good elbow.

“I swear, babe, I’m lookin’ for the silver lining here, but everything about this stinks.”

Levi draws his sword and grinds out what turns out to be his fifth cigarette. Chain-smoking like a damn chimney. “If we find him first, fold back and let the wolves take over. If he sneaks up on us, run like hell. That’s the plan.”

“And when we do find him?” Levi looks over his shoulder at me as I ask. “Set phasers to stun?”

He stares at me out of the corner of his eye for a moment, then turns away again.

“Don’t kill him unless you have to.”

I can _feel_ myself going pale.

\--

With the re-wrapped key resting heavy against my chest, we move as silently as we can through the condemned city. Marco leads us with Dulcinea’s instructions, theoretically, sometimes stopping at stony intersections to stare blankly down at her. Eventually, he leads us to a dingier part of the city, through winding alleys that more closely resemble drainage gutters than actual streets. It’s darker here, grimier, but just as silent and lifeless as fucking everywhere else down here.

The buildings crowd in ever tighter around us, the street winding through low stone archways and past blown-out doors and crumbling brickwork. Nothing moves in the shadows, but I almost wish something would.

Something feels... wrong. I mean, more wrong than every fucking other thing about this whole fucking ordeal.

I can’t shake this gnawing unease. Why the fuck is Godeater still down here? He got what he came for. Not only is he still down here, but even weirder, this whole place was supposed to collapse and fill up with dirt or whatever when Asmodeus died. All the rest of them apparently did, given that nowhere else in the damn country has perplexing-ass walled cities lurking over gaping chasms. But this place... this place remains, and so does Godeater.

Why?

This whole fucking thing is awful. We literally know jack shit about anything, and we’re hunting a creature we don’t understand with a purpose we don’t understand in a place we do not fucking understand. I’m going to give myself a goddamn panic attack with all these red herrings. Under every rock, I just find a hundred more questions, and I can’t focus enough to figure out which ones are the important ones.

I know what he looks like, I know what he smells like, and I know theoretically how to kill him, but for some reason, my usual three questions don’t put my mind at ease. Not with everything else at stake. _Especially_ not with the way this guy’s riding my dick so hard I can feel it receding, goddamn.

I never did like mysteries.

We hadn’t noticed them in the gloom, but hanging above us are these strange lanterns, lumpy spheres ornate in all the wrong ways. They dangle lifeless and haunting, jutting out from every narrow archway.

The only reason we notice them at all is because, all at once, they ignite in an almost violent purple light.

All down the alley we’re padding down, stretching for what seems like miles in either direction, these cracked orbs come to life with a shuddering hiss. 

I whip my head around, looking behind us—nothing—ahead of us— _nothing._

The flickering lamplight stains the street a truly unsettling violet color, too sharp to be natural and too much for my eyes to take in without my head aching and my heart pounding.

We cluster into a tight group, looking around, weapons at the ready and nerves all kinds of fucking shot, but other than the soft lick of the unnatural flames, we’re still left in a crushing sort of silence.

I can’t tell if this is a warning or not, but either way, I do not fucking like it.

We wait for a moment longer, until it seems that the lamplight is nothing more than another trick, another illusion to throw us off our game.

God, I really _really_ hope it’s not just me. _Please_ let it not just be me.

Cautiously, quietly, we press forward, the wavering light setting us further on edge than it should. I want to fucking shoot all of the damn lamps out.

It’s bad when I prefer complete darkness.

When we come to another narrow intersection, Marco presses forward, not even sparing a glance down either side. The others follow his lead, like we have been, and it seems none of them hear the rattling whisper echoing out from the darkness shrouding the right-hand path.

I’m guessing none of them heard my name under that rattle, either.

Fucking stupendous.

I grit my teeth and press forward, my hackles raised, my fist tightening around my drawn knife, and I do my very best to pretend I do not fucking hear the unnerving, mute racket echoing softly after us.

Why just me? Why is he targeting me? Why has it been me and _only_ me since the very fucking beginning of this shitty nightmare?

When we hit another intersection, I can’t help but notice that it looks fucking identical to the last one, and the right-hand side is still awfully friendly toward me.

He’s playing with us.

Like a spider watching the fly wriggle in its web, getting more and more entangled the more it thrashes until it’s truly immobile and helpless to stop the spider from liquefying its innards.

I slow to a stop just past the intersection, and immediately the rest of the party stop around me.

“Jean?” Marco turns to me, his face concerned. I must look peaky or some shit. Probably this purple fucking light.

I lick my lips as I try to decide how to best broach the subject.

It’s not like I liked our first plan to begin with, so while this isn’t an improvement, it’s something I can control. I have the key, I have weapons, and I have Godeater’s undivided attention.

He wants me, right?

I look up, meeting Marco’s eyes, and he knows me _so_ damn well. Too well.

Jaw clenched, teeth grinding, I offer him the world’s shittiest smile, by proxy the world’s shittiest reassurance.

Godeater wants to play with _me,_ for whatever reason.

So I cast myself into his web.

I move too quickly for anyone to stop me, barreling back between the wolves, and I skid around the corner toward the left-side fork, away from Godeater’s toying clicking, Marco’s startled shout echoing out of my plane of understanding as I haul ass straight into the darkness.

Run. Run, run run run. 

My feet pound against the cracking rock, my eyes straining to adjust to the pressing gloom, but it’s going to take a while. The lamplight was bright, purposely blinding, and I cannot see _shit_ as I haul ass down this winding street, terrified and hyperaware of every rock that threatens to catch my feet and send me ass over elbows into Godeater’s waiting jaws.

He’s behind me.

I can _hear him._

That awful fucking clatter, like a snake, like rocks in a wood bowl—earthy and woody and _horrifying._ I can’t take it, I cannot _take_ that sound, so I sprint faster, my lungs and my thighs and my feet _burning,_ and I can _hear him—_

_Galloping._

He sounds like hell’s legion, hooves sparking and flashing lightning through the alley, gracing me with a bare glimpse of whatever the fuck’s in front of me for a nanosecond too brief to process on any level higher than a primal survival instinct. He’s behind me, he’s cracking and gurgling and under the rocks rattling violent and nausea-inducing through my bones, I hear him _laughing._

Playing with me.

My heart fires like a cannon against my sternum as the bare oxygen my lungs struggle to haul in becomes insufficient. My muscles burn, there’s a stitch in my side like a dull knife twisting between my ribs, my brain is losing focus and I am reduced to a frightened animal.

In the strobe flash of light Godeater allows me, I see a wall, _fuck a wall—_

When I round the corner, no logic fueling my choice of left over right, I skid and almost eat shit, _dammit,_ but I get my shit together and keep sprinting, keep sprinting, and now Godeater’s sparks reveal that I’m in a fucking _tunnel_ or something.

I need somewhere where I can loop back, where I can lose him, get him turned around enough that I can regroup or sneak up on him—

Like that’ll happen.

The tunnel curves and I follow it, my ears ringing and my head aching, sweat pouring down my stinging face, hypersensitive from the blood crowding my skull with nowhere to go, crushing everything but _runrunrun._

Somewhere to double back, somewhere to hide, somewhere I won’t be fucking eaten alive, and as I run and heave panting breaths and he _rattles, fuck,_ his darkness presses behind me like a fucking wall, threatening to devour me whole if I fuck up even the _tiniest bit._ It scales the walls and hangs like claws from the ceiling and laps at my heels, always just behind me, _just behind me,_ salivating in anticipation of feeling my bones snap between his unholy obsidian fangs.

_Light!_

I haul ass around a corner, there’s rubble, vault over it, keep moving, keep moving, because there’s _light_ at the end of this narrow, towering alleyway, and if I can just get to it—if I can make it—maybe he’ll _fuck off—_

He speeds up, thundering and snarling just behind me, but I’ve already cleared the threshold, and I’m sprinting through what feels like a fucking coliseum. 

It’s not, though.

It’s a cathedral.

Most of the pews are gone, matchsticks across the faded carpet, always matchsticks, and the stained glass is cracked and jagged, shining bright and glimmering in the low lamplight, these ones just normal flames.

I finally come to a stop at the alter and find no religious iconography, nothing that could feasibly stand a chance of keeping him at bay if this place is no longer hallowed ground. I whip my head around, anything, _anything,_ the key heavy against my straining chest.

His darkness comes.

Turning to face him, I stare horrified at Eren where he stands at the top of the subtle slope, just inside the splintered doors to this godless temple.

No, not Eren.

Not anymore.

My knife shakes in my hands, jittering with my frantic pulse. I grit my teeth harder, so hard it hurts, keeping myself centered, focused, driving down the rising panic as he stares at me with those _fucking_ eyes.

This one’s not an illusion, not a shade.

This is Godeater, the last of his kind, slowly breaking and distorting the corpse of someone I knew. Someone I cared about. Someone I could have loved once if I wasn’t such a fuckup.

 _No,_ no, he’s getting to me again, his vile aura seeping through the cathedral slowly, the spider’s web gently extending a hand to me, inviting me in. Inviting me to drown in my fucking baggage.

_No more. Never again._

I cram the hilt of my knife between my bared teeth and rip my gun out of its holster, my blood like fire in my veins, and as I hit the safety and aim at him, he tilts his head and _grins._

_‘you’r e m o re fu n t han i th oug h t’_

No smartass response. No flailing for my sense of humor.

Sixteen bullets. Don’t lose count. 

His eyes narrow gleefully.

_‘i wo nder how y our b o ne marr ow w ill t ast e’_

I pull the trigger. One, two, three, four, four shots, and his rattling _yowl_ explodes against the crumbling walls and echoes through the rafters, his darkness shuddering and curling as blood runs down his torn chest.

Two hits. Two misses. Don’t lose count.

Numbers, calculations swirl in my mind but they all cease to exist when he stands up straight again, and he’s not fucking playing anymore. 

From the void warping the world around him, he draws his fucking monstrous blade, easily my height and serrated all the way down its jagged lightning edge, primitive and terrifying. It’ll be slow, but he’ll only need to hit me once.

The gun quakes violently in my hand. My breath fogs out humid around the leather hilt clenched tight between my teeth.

When he moves, it’s with Eren’s powerful strides, every step echoing between my ribs, his eyes burning holes in my brain and holding me hostage, I’m paralyzed, _fuck,_ the spider has me—

I just have to get the key into one of those bullet holes in his chest.

My eyes wide, breath coming faster, harder, inefficient and dizzying, panic starting to boil up from the cracked corners of my control, he stalks toward me and drags his monolith of a weapon along the ground behind him, eyes hideously sunken and stuck _right on me._

If I can get close—

Before I can finish this thought, the world erupts and control of my fate is ripped from my sweaty hands.

The stained glass window beside us explodes inward in a twinkling rain of painted shrapnel, and in the locus of the debris, a huge, dark form.

Mikasa lands on Godeater, whose jagged teeth were bared as he wrested his blade into both hands like a goddamn axe. It doesn’t matter, because the force with which she blows into him knocks them both through what pews were left, rolling and screaming. I try to adjust, try to follow, but everything is violence and I’m no longer in control. She digs her claws into the shredded, frayed carpet and drags herself to a stop, kicking her back legs out in front of her and sending Godeater crashing across the debris field. 

He rolls, his blade spins away, but he gets his knees under him and digs his dagger claws into the carpet too, slicing long, thin trails in the fabric until he finally skids to a stop and slides into an animal crouch.

Breathing just a fraction harder, black blood dripping to mingle with the streaked tar from his bruised feet, Godeater looks up at Mikasa, teeth bared, _still fucking grinning._

Just as the grin splits and he unleashes this unholy, deafening _roar,_ his teeth dripping ichor, the foundations of the earth shaking beneath me, Mikasa flips back onto all fours and fucking _charges_ him, and _god, isn’t she paying attention?_ Godeater bellows, he _howls,_ clamoring to the dead gods of this house, and then he _leans his head down,_ he’ll impale her, the _antlers—_

I bring my bum hand up to steady the wavering gun and hold my breath, firing one, two shots—two hits, the force knocks his head aside, shatters one of his horns at the base, and it’s just enough leeway that Mikasa can tackle him full-force and wrap her entire tank-like body around his and just start _shredding._

My eyes widen, trying to find another good angle, and Godeater rolls with her, both savage and tearing like wild dogs, until he’s crouched on her chest and _shrieking_ in her snapping, frothing face, the sound shaking loose shards of glass from the picture windows—

There’s something—something _around my leg—_

I look down, hyperfocused, so fast it makes me dizzy, to see a thick wire wrapped around my calf.

I don’t get to see where it leads. It yanks.

I fall on my ass, knife nearly jolted out of my grinding teeth, and I’m pulled too fast to scream, back up the aisle toward the door by my fucking leg.

Hanji catches my other leg before I kick Marco with it, then sets to unwrapping me as Marco yanks me to my feet.

He’s _pissed._

At me.

But he still kisses me, his hand fisted in my hair, desperate and rough and too damn brief before he lets go and grips my elbow.

The sound of another window shattering fills my brain, and the sound of Armin’s baying cry joins the fray, the shredding cloth, the screams and pants and crushed debris, and Levi spares me a half-second’s furious glance before he sprints through the cathedral doors and down the aisle, moving almost too fast to see, gun drawn, loaded, ready. He swings up onto the burnt alter and leaps onto a beheaded statue I hadn’t noticed, scaling its robes until he’s perched on its shoulders, aiming his gun at the wild, blood-soaked frenzy whirlwinding through the hollow room.

I try to gasp words, but I’ve forgotten them all, and no one’s listening to me anyway.

Hanji pokes their head into the doorway and looks straight up, at a balcony, and their eyes follow it to a set of spiral stairs set into the wall.

At the far end.

Armin goes _flying_ into the back wall with a kicked whine, collapsing winded against the floor as Godeater flexes his shoulder, his neck, and then his skull cracks against the floor, courtesy of Mikasa’s enormous fist wrapping around his head and fucking _piledriving_ him down into the stone.

_“Move!”_

Hanji’s voice sparks deep in my bones. They sprint past Armin, and I follow, Marco right on my heels. Armin stands after we pass, shaking his head with a gruff snort, blood matting his fur in more places than I care to count.

We scramble up the punishingly-smooth steps, Marco basically carrying me up the second half after I lose my grip, and sprint across the balcony.

I jump up onto the railing, wobbling just a bit, just in time to see Godeater slam his foot down on Armin’s throat, pinning him to the floor and crushing his windpipe, impervious to the thick slashes Armin inflicts upon the restraint. Mikasa charges, too fast to be possible with her size, but it’s not fast enough.

Godeater grabs her too, wrapping his black hands around her throat, and I can see her struggling from up here, numbness spreading through me.

Levi can’t get a good shot. Hanji aims, then plugs a silver bolt through Godeater’s other knee, but all he does is _rattle._

_‘EATEATEAT—’_

I’m screaming.

_“Hanji—!”_

Mikasa goes limp in Godeater’s grasp. Armin’s eyes are rolled back, his paws sliding uselessly through sticky blood.

Godeater brings Mikasa forward, fucking _unhinges his jaw—he’ll eat her—_

Levi loses his shit.

He flips down from his perch, eyes wide and _so furious,_ sprinting to the side until he can aim past Mikasa’s body and fire one, two, _so_ many shots into Godeater’s chest, his shoulder, but he’s _mad, starving, so close—_

Hanji curses and leaps down from the balcony. Levi’s clip is almost out.

Godeater decides against eating Mikasa right then, in favor of hurling her dead weight straight at Levi, bowling him over and crushing him under half a ton of raw muscle. Hanji’s moving, throwing the crossbow aside in favor of their handgun, dodging Godeater’s sin eyes, but he reaches down and grabs Armin too, and it’s only then that I see what Hanji’s doing.

The clamor of the battle pitches into white noise.

The animal in me takes complete control.

I jump too. Somewhere, I hear Marco cursing and calling my name, but I _see_ what Hanji’s doing.

They sprint around toward Levi, and Godeater hurls Armin at them, and the force of it sends them both flying into the far wall with an echoing, cavernous _crunch._

Godeater’s back is to me.

My knife is in my hand.

I leap.

I wrap around Godeater’s back and cling tight, even as he’s already trying to throw me off, grabbing for my legs, but I know better this time. I know how to distract him.

I sink my blade deep into his shoulder, digging the jagged edge into his collarbone with a disgusting sawing sound, and then I rip it out and chuck it, my hand already gripping the key and ripping it off my neck.

My teeth yank off the handkerchief.

It slices into me when I grab it, and then again as I aim, but when I gore the key straight down into the gaping wound I’d carved for it, it stills.

Godeater _screams._

I shove harder, shattering whatever’s in the key’s way as I shove the entirety of it into his body.

His back arches, his hands reach back and claw gashes in my face, my arms, my neck, my shoulders, and white-hot steam billows from the key, and all I hear is _boiling._

He throws me off, staggering onto one knee as he grasps desperately at the leather strand, but he can’t touch it without it fighting back, and when he finally wraps his fingers around it, they all whip unnaturally backward in a gut-wrenching _crack,_ leaving him gasping for air and collapsing facefirst onto the carpet.

I watch him fight as I lose blood, watch him claw his way toward me with his huge, bugging eyes, but just as he reaches to slash through me with his one remaining hand, his claws clash against solid steel in a shower of sparks, and his fingers burst into flame.

Marco stands above me, kicking Godeater’s hand away from me with his mail leg, bringing his foot down in a vicious, sizzling _stomp_ just for the way it makes Godeater _screech._ I flail for Marco’s other leg, my blood-coated fingers barely catching in his jeans, but it’s enough to catch his attention.

The rattling grows weaker as Marco drops to my side, trying to decide where to put his hands, which gash is bleeding the most, but it’s not important.

He’s _mad_ at me.

“M-Marco,” I gasp, my vision going dark at the edges. He stares into my eyes, his own gaze frantic, babbling pleas and comforts. _“Marco!”_

“J-Jean, hold on, love, hold on for me—”

I struggle to breathe the too-thin air around my broken body, fighting for my consciousness. It’s _important._

“Marco—” He looks up at me again, covered in my blood.

Before I can tell him I’m sorry, before I can tell him I love him, before I can even remember what words _are_ in the rising darkness, an _awful_ cacophony fills the cathedral, reverberating through the walls and windows and shuddering through the rafters.

A werewolf’s cry.

Fuck, fuck, Armin, Mikasa—

Marco’s shell-shocked face tells me more than I want to know but not enough at the same time.

I summon the strength to roll onto my stomach to look behind me, toward the source of the racket, and I find Armin, dripping blood and broken in several places, nudging his snout against Hanji’s limp form.

Hanji isn’t moving.

Whining frantically, Armin lifts his paw and presses against them, shifting and fidgeting. They just jostle under his attempts to find them.

When he finally knocks them out of their seated position, their head slumps to the side at an _ungodly_ tilt, and the stone behind them is a shotgun splatter of blood and shards of bone and—

And pink bits of brain.

Tears streak down my face but I am frozen, numb, my vision going hazy with tears and with blood loss, and my last thought before the world sinks black around me will haunt me until my dying day.

Hanji Zoe is dead.


	7. Grace Within Forgiveness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Too many times. Too many times I have found myself here, weak and useless. No more.
> 
> Come hell or high water, I will crush this unholy aberration with my bare hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)
> 
> (sorry for the long break, i was EXTREMELY stuck ;; all good now tho)

There is a place I go when I die. 

I’ve been there more times than your average bear. It’s the place that haunts me the most, Christa said once. A slowly-warping, barren plane of torment that gathers all my darkest fears, all my biggest failures, and twists them into a dark chimera for the sole purpose of driving my lost soul to madness. A drowning place, a sharp and awful place, a place where I am alone with the chaos that lies buried underneath all my counted breaths and stubborn denial.

This isn’t that place.

I really expected it to be, though. Honestly thought my gig was up this time.

To tell the truth, I don’t know where I am. I just know that it hurts, and that I’m dizzy. Everything’s moving too much, flashing lights and urgent voices muffled beyond recognition. 

There are no stars this time, no cosmic hallucinations, no plague-ridden limbo. I have no answers, but I’m so used that damned feeling by now that it barely fazes me.

I want Marco.

I don’t know where I am, but I need to know that he’s safe. I need to know that he can get out of here, away from this dark and terrible place that will have to serve as an insufficient tomb for the brightest mind the world has seen for centuries.

Hanji Zoe is dead.

The voices stretch away from me as if pulled by an unseen hand, warped and slowed until they’re nothing but a low rumble, a fire beneath the lifeless earth, and the flashing lights fade out with them.

Everything is dark, and I drift out of consciousness once more.

\--

A jostling movement shakes loose the damp earth veiling me, a nudge enough to clear my eyes so I can see that I am not alone in my grave.

This is still not the place I go when I die, and it’s not the pretty morphine delusion of a river of stars either. I am still lost.

Eren stands at my feet, his face deathly pale and his eyes still void-black and endless, his one remaining horn glittering with starlight. No, wait, not Eren.

Godeater.

Fuck, I’m so damn tired.

I stare up at him, withered from blood loss and _exhausted,_ lacking even the energy to feel repulsion or hatred or fear.

He stares down at me, unblinking, his gaze trained on mine and slowly boring holes through my vacant skull.

I’m too tired for his bullshit. There isn’t enough blood in my body to fuel even half the things I should be feeling right now, which I imagine is a curse but looks an awful lot like a blessing, if you ask me. He stares at me, I stare right back at him, and together we bask in my pressing darkness. Just a man lying in his grave, visited by a cannibal demigod. Hanging out or whatever.

What a boring hallucination. Guess my subconscious ran out of the fun shit.

When Godeater finally blinks, he tilts his stupid, lopsided, shiny head, and this asshole has the balls to talk to me in Eren’s voice, rough with disuse as it is.

_‘You revere no god.’_

It takes literally all my energy, but I roll my eyes at him. Worth it.

“No shit, stupid.”

_‘What spell is this you’ve cast?’_

Spell, my ass. I just scoff, albeit weakly. Too tired for anything else. I really just wanna lay here. Rest in peace, or whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing. Wish he’d fuck off already.

He blinks his enormous eyes at me again. _‘You have seen visions of many gods. You speak with them. They speak back. Yet you do not bow.’_

“Ain’t done shit for me,” I croak, letting my tired eyes slide closed for now. He’s still there, though, fucking lurking behind my eyelids, nestled in my brain. Annoying. “Got better things to do.”

Godeater mulls that over for a long moment, wheezing softly in the thick quiet of whatever this place is, his eyes a little too thorough in studying my beaten corpse to be comfortable. I ignore him and try to will him away, to force his noisy ass out of my private death delusion, but he doesn’t even flicker. Guess he’s not a product of my subconscious after all. Ugh.

 _‘I see you now, infidel,’_ he rattles. _‘You view the heavens not as divine but as false idols. Not your masters but insects. Irrelevant and powerless.’_

My brow furrows, sending a bead of cold sweat down my bloody temple. 

Godeater _smiles._ Not his twisted, horrifying grin, but something disgustingly warmer, almost _commiserating._

_‘We are the same, you and I. Brothers.’_

Nausea curls in my gut as I become more aware of how weak my body is, how sweaty and broken. A sharp pain sparks from the inside of my battered elbow, and hands grip my arms, my legs, my shoulders, unseen but so _damn_ strong, holding me utterly still and setting my fluttering heart ablaze in panic. 

I’m being held down. Imprisoned. _Buried._

I can’t breathe.

Godeater’s stolen face glimmers against the pitch, eyes narrowing with the kind of joy that sends my brain _reeling,_ fear and anger and adrenaline starting to flood back into my restrained body with the renewed pounding of my overworked heart.

That vile, shuddering whisper lingers in my ears as the delusion begins to fade and I, like Lazarus, rise again.

_‘We are Gods.’_

\--

I am afraid.

My heaving breath is uneven and cracked, the feeble efforts of my real body, my real lungs, the best attempt at panic that my brain can wring out of my blood-starved nerves. I’m sobbing, gasping stale air, my vision blurry with tears or with lingering blindness, and I’m not alone anymore but the sounds and the voices and the hands are too much, too frightening, such a bad place to come back to.

I’m so scared.

All I can do is cry, because my family is dead and I don’t know where Marco is. All I know is that hands on my face keep my straining neck stable so I can’t look anywhere but at the tilting grey field somewhere above me, and that hands on my sluggish limbs keep me from struggling.

So damn weak, so tired, so scared and upset and I want this racket to stop, please stop, please leave me alone. I don’t want to cry anymore, it hurts my frantic head, but I can’t stop crying as long as these overpowering hands hold my broken soul under the surface.

I’m so cold. My entire being is shivering with pain, fighting over the meager trickle of blood I might have been lucky enough to have not left in a spray on the floor of Hanji’s grave. The thought just makes me cry harder, and in response to my misery, the bodiless voices around me grow more urgent, impersonal and terrifying. Grey, grey, blurry grey, I just want to go home. I want to go home where it’s safe and sleep forever, I’m _so tired._ Wrung out like a sponge, not a drop of bravery or heroism left to me.

There’s a clamor somewhere above my head, whatever direction that may be, rising voices and a scuffle, then the quick, muffled sound of what could be footsteps if every other beat didn’t echo so sharply in my aching brain.

 _“Jean,”_ in my ears, vibrating the haze filling my pounding skull, and even though I know this voice better than my own I cry harder.

“Jean, Jean, I love you— _no, sir, just_ —Jean, you have to hold on, hold on for me—”

Blurry grey, swimming in my pooling tears like a distant storm cloud, until a familiar shape fills my unfocused vision.

Marco blinks down at me, filthy and bloodstained, his own tears joining the rivers of mine dripping into my hair and into my ears, and he breathes, “Stay with me, love, just hold on.”

I try to respond, my throat struggling to keep up, but he’s pulled away before the words bubble up from my aching gut.

I’m scared, and I can’t stop crying, but I’m holding on.

I’m holding on, Marco.

\--

I feel like I’ve spent a lot of time like this lately. Broken, bloody, constantly in danger of shivering out my last frail breath. Half-conscious, drugged up and drifting in and out of my crumbling old body. 

Even taking the rest of my relatively short life into consideration, I think I’ve spent more time in the hospital than most people do in their natural lives. Some of that is my fault, some of it isn’t. 

I’ve broken nearly every bone in my body. When it rains, just getting out of bed is a bone-shattering struggle, so sometimes I don’t. I’ve had thousands of stitches, maybe tens of thousands. It’s genuinely surprising that I still even have a nose to speak of. Most of my teeth are fake, and most of my skin is made of scar tissue. The real reason I can’t go near MRIs is because half of my old breaks still have metal pins in them. I have a limp. Some days I can’t use my left hand at all, even when it’s not in a cast.

All of that is just the surface.

I am a broken man, in flesh and in mind.

As much as I try to pretend that I’m doing the world a service, I know it’s only a matter of time before I cannot win this fight anymore. Mortals aren’t built to handle fighting hell’s real monsters. Not on the scale that I’ve had to. Ghosts and ghouls and minor evils are one thing, but humankind isn’t meant to throw dice in the games of gods. 

Reiner was right. I have to stop.

I can’t do this anymore.

One last job, I tell myself, and this time I really mean it. One last big job, one last screaming nightmare, and then I’m taking Marco and running far, far away with him.

We just have to hold on.

\--

Waking up in a hospital bed isn’t even déjà vu anymore. It’s basically just an average day for me. Whoever’s handling our insurance fraud must be using some kind of black magic, because I’m a billion-dollar man in the worst kind of way. 

I take a shaky breath and move to run my hand down my clammy face, but evidently I forgot about the rock-solid plaster encasing the damn thing. Now I can probably add ‘black eye’ to my list of injuries this round, as if the list needed to be any damn longer.

“ _Ow,_ fuck,” I rasp, sleep-thick and barely audible even in the still air of my room. My other hand is weighed down, though, heavy enough to keep me from retrieving it. When I look down to see if it’s still there, I find an extremely messy mop of black cowlicks where my wrist ought to be.

Marco’s snoring softly, slouched in a cheap plastic chair beside the bed, but I don’t know how he managed to fall asleep in such a weird position. He’s got one bum arm too, so he’s twisted his good hand up onto the bed, probably to hold onto mine. I can’t tell, I’m pretty sure my hand’s asleep. Plus, he’s resting his cheek over our fingers, keeping my one functional limb safe and warm and really rather numb. He’s frowning slightly, the soft worry line between his eyebrows showing prominently his unease.

If I put my back into it, I can wiggle my thumb, so I shift it idly back and forth to stroke his smooshed cheek. He looks kinda peaky, like he’s been sleeping here with me for a week. It wouldn’t surprise me. I doubt he’d be able to sleep in our bed alone, not when I’m stuck here. Part of me wishes he’d go home and rest, but a bigger part of me knows that if I’d woken up alone, I’d already be sobbing again.

I watch him sleep for a while longer, still trying to sort through my own grogginess. Soreness is starting to set in, kind of sharp and tugging in too many damn places to count, new and fresh layered on top of old and aggravated. My body’s totally fucked at this point. If push comes to shove and we have to fight again, there’s no chance in hell I’ll even be able to play sniper. Rifle’s kickback would probably shatter my taped-together old man skeleton. Better hope to whatever major deity’s up right now that Connie and Sasha are back in Trost and ready for hell. Literally. 

Not my favorite train of thought. Having a little pity, I exhale slowly and look around my room to distract myself.

Seems like the same one I always end up in, wedged in a vaguely private corner on a floor Reiner basically owns, though how the hell he managed that is a mystery to me. Probably the work of our local corporate higher power.

I can’t even begin to remember the logistics of the illegal shit we pull just to keep this crazy train running. There’s more of us poor bastards than one might think, even though it feels an awful lot like I’m the only sheriff in Trost, and we definitely can’t do what we do alone. We have friends in high places all over that allow us to slink through holes in the law, suited officials with clever cover-ups for when shit gets rough. Probably expensive ones too, now that I think about it. My job is on par property-damage-wise with the fucking Avengers.

Hanji explained it to me once, but I wasn’t exactly hanging on their every word at the tender, drunken age of nineteen.

Hanji.

A sharp twist of pain curls under my collarbone, tightening some restless muscle all down the inside of my lax arm. The same twinge of physical pain that I feel when my douche body decides that my mental anguish isn’t enough on its own. I wince. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s a minor distraction from the burn in my sinuses that threatens to explode just thinking that name.

My head hurts from crying. Still.

Marco stirs slightly when I sniffle despite my best attempts to control it, a sleepy little hum squeaking out against my numb fingers. 

Fuck, I love him.

We don’t deserve this hell. Neither of us.

\--

When Marco startles awake, suddenly bolting upright, I try to pretend that I haven’t been awake for a few hours already. I would also try to pretend that I haven’t been crying, but the enormous damp spot under the dripping point of my chin and the likely flush under my sunken eyes would give me away in a heartbeat. Besides, Marco knows me better than that.

He looks around somewhat frantically, his fingers gripping mine tightly, and I grimace as my hand fills with that pins and needles bullshit. 

Once his heart’s slowed down a little, Marco sighs and turns to me, a soft, relieved smile flickering briefly across his face. He doesn’t comment on my obnoxiously wet sniffling, instead standing and leaning in to wrap his arm around my trembling shoulders, holding me as close as he can to his warm, steady chest. For whatever reason, he’s wearing a stiff set of hospital scrubs. I bury my face in his neck, breathing him in until he pulls away to stretch the kinks out of his poor bent spine.

“So,” he murmurs, running his good hand through his messy hair. “Wanna pick a door?”

I frown down at the sheets. The usual array of choices that awaits us whenever one of us wakes up in the hospital applies here too. Door number one, my damage report, including how angry my overworked doctors are with me. Door number two, any news Marco has on other members of the team or the job at hand. Door number three, shitty nurse station coffee.

Can’t really say any of that sounds appealing. Not even coffee, though only because that would involve Marco leaving the room.

Peering up at him through my bangs, I chew on my lip for a moment, reluctant to admit that I’m not ready for the real world yet in any capacity. He tilts his head and gives me a tiny, crooked smile before asking, “Door number four?” 

Fuck yes. I nod immediately, trying to ignore the burn rising in my sinuses again. Kinda wondering if I’ll ever actually stop crying.

As he kicks his shoe off, I make room for him on my bed, hissing at the sharp, sudden pain that erupts from a couple different places. He climbs in beside me and squirms around until I can rest my head on his shoulder, slinging my arm over his stomach and tangling my legs around his. Dulcinea clanks at me, so I pull my bare feet away from her, half out of respect and half because she’s cold as shit.

Door number four is the best door. Namely, snuggle and pretend everything’s okay for a while. 

Marco presses gentle little kisses into my still-gross hair, as admirably tolerant as always of my thick layer of hospital grunge. He runs his hand soothingly across my shoulders, up and down my back, and the close contact between us eases that restless pain in my chest a little. Just for now.

I’m not ready to face the consequences of that fight. I’m not ready to hear how many of my ragtag family died, how broken they are, anything. I’m not ready to think about our next step in this horrible story.

So damn tired... I just want to sleep. Just a little while longer.

The familiar sound of Marco’s steady pulse under my ear lulls me to sleep again, and he lets me doze off, gently petting the tension out of my aching muscles and murmuring sweet love to me between slow, lingering kisses.

\--

Despite probably not having an ounce of water left in my body, I know I was crying in my sleep. Marco’s shirt is soaked under my cheek and firmly adhered to my sticky skin, more than enough proof of my apparently never-ending misery. He doesn’t say anything about it, though, not even when I sigh and run my palm across the big wet spot. Instead, he pulls me back down to him and wraps me in his banged-up arms as best he can, kissing the salt from under my eyes and letting us both have what we sorely need. Physical reassurance, and piles of it.

After all the shit we’ve been through, Marco and I understand each other eerily well. He’s my best friend, my big gay soul mate, the best partner anyone could ask for in every aspect of our lives. Literally the only person I’ve ever met who can accurately wield a spear, too, which is a huge plus for several reasons.

I’m gonna marry the shit out of him. Maybe one day I’ll actually gather up the scrote to ask.

I sigh as I slide my cold-ass hand up the hem of his wrinkled scrub shirt, gently spreading my fingers over his undoubtedly bruised ribs. He twitches slightly at the chill, nuzzling into my temple, but he lets me leech his copious warmth without complaint.

If I could, I’d stay like this forever. Not here specifically. In general. Wrapped safe in Marco’s arms, his lips soothing across my skin, my hair rustling under his relaxed, rhythmic exhales. The only problem with this waking fantasy is that both of us are badly pretending that we’re okay, and neither of us are talking because the moment we start, the world has to go dark again. It’s shitty.

When I shift to peer up at him, I cautiously test the weight of my head on his chest, watching him for a wince or a hiss. Luckily, I seem to have found the one unbruised spot between us, given the morose little smile that curves his pretty lips, so I let myself relax onto him. Hopefully my pointy-ass chin doesn’t cause him undue misery.

“Hi,” he murmurs, running his fingers through my hair. I’m honestly surprised I don’t have mats, Christ only knows when I brushed my hair last. His breath smells like coffee, and a quick glance to the side reveals a little paper cup of shitty nurse station coffee, likely courtesy of Reiner.

“Hey,” I rasp in reply. I don’t even wanna know what I smell like. Bless this man for being able to love an unwashed swine, especially at this distance. “How’s it going?”

He shrugs as best he can without jostling me, pursing his lips. “That’s complicated.”

“Goody.” I frown again, my brow furrowing. Probably shouldn’t evade it any longer, though, who knows how long I’ve been out.

Before I can figure out where to even begin in the clusterfuck that is our current reality, Marco shifts under me, stuffing a pillow under his head so he can look at me more easily. “So, in addition to your usual choices,” he hums, “I also have good news and bad news.”

I roll my eyes loudly. Fabulous. “You want me to pick out of _five?”_

“Just between the newses first. Good or bad?”

“How bad is bad?”

Marco makes a face, one I recognize well as the one he makes when he’s trying really hard not to giggle at my expense. “You’ll be, um. Annoyed.”

He fails to contain the giggles when I grimace irritably, but I don’t mind in the least, because it feels like it’s been a thousand years since I heard that cute little laugh. It soothes me slightly, as much as I can be soothed knowing where this conversation invariably has to go. 

“Fuck it. Gimme some good news, I need that shit.”

“The Braus-Springers are back from up north, and they took care of our not-kraken problem.”

“Joy,” I huff. I’m still fucking salty about that. Another solid reason to hate Grisha Jaeger’s guts out. Fucking false advertising. “That it?”

Marco nods, shifting to rub his good hand along my shoulder. “The bad news is that we’re supposed to be locked in this room for the foreseeable future.”

My eyes widen. “Excuse me?” He bites his lip and nods again, correct in his prediction that I’d be pissed. I’m _very_ pissed. “Under whose orders?”

“Annie’s, after she finished up in the OR. What was it Reiner said... oh, ‘if glares could punch a guy in the face, Jean probably wouldn’t have a face anymore.’”

“Huh.” I scratch the back of my head idly. Kinda sucks for Annie that she ended up being our surgeon, but she understandably asks the fewest questions. Pretty crucial quality, given the weird shit she’s had to pull out of our bodies over the years. “Well, if I need to get out, I’ll just pick the lock, no big deal.” Marco hums in agreement.

I sigh heavily, aiming my hospital breath into Marco’s shirt as I trace little circles across his chest. He knows I’m stalling, and he lets me, probably for both our sakes. 

A thought occurs to me, separate from that end of the conversation, and I squint up at him. “How long have you been in here with me?”

“Since Annie ordered your imprisonment. So, hmm... two days? They kept you pretty drugged up for a while, but I can’t tell if that was to keep you from escaping or because you actually needed sleep.”

“Probably both.”

“Yeah,” he sighs, running a gentle knuckle up and down the shell of my ear.

I lean into the feeling for a moment, then ask, “How’d you get the thought police to let you live here with me the whole time?”

“I told them I’d just scale the side of the building and climb in the window,” he says, smiling widely. I manage to catch my amused snort before it blows up my busted nose, shaking my head instead.

“Stubborn. Proud of you.”

“Learned from the best,” he teases, tugging gently on my earlobe. 

I shoot a crooked smile up at him, not bothering to deny my extraordinary stubbornness, before I squeeze my eyes shut and grumble, “Alright, door number one. What’s the damage?”

Marco sighs slowly, running his hand distractedly through his hair. “You lost a _lot_ of blood. I-it was horrible.” I hum and reach up to catch his hand in mine, squeezing our laced fingers.

“Sorry, love.”

“I’m just glad you didn’t die.” He nudges me with his knee, so I scoot up and kiss him softly, reassuringly, and a few more times. “You were so pale,” he whispers against my lips, his voice trembling slightly. He nuzzles into my cheek, his long eyelashes fluttering over my skin. “Almost looked like a ghost. I was really freaked out.”

He pauses to collect himself, swallowing and exhaling shakily before he continues.

“Sorry. Um, so you’re going to have a lot of new scars. Like, scars on the same level as your butt-scars.”

I groan, dipping to hide my face in his neck. “Super.”

“I promise I’ll still think you’re cute.”

“Mm, thanks.” I drop a few warm kisses against his pulse before I lean up again, brushing my lips against his. 

“Have you, uh, felt your ear yet?”

My eyebrows shoot up. “What?”

He sucks on his lips and carefully taps one of his busted fingers against my other ear, which throbs irately in response. “It’s kinda gross, but a few chunks got, uh. Ripped out.”

“Aw, dude,” I groan, carefully leaning up to sit on my heels beside him. There’s no mirror in this damn room, so I have no idea what I look like, but when I cautiously reach up to feel it out, all I get is a fucking mass of pointy stitches. So much for those piercings. There’s more behind my ear, along the side of my head, and a few on my cheek. “Eww.”

Marco nods, reaching over to squeeze my thigh reassuringly.

“I almost don’t even wanna know what else there is,” I grouse, looking down at my bandage-ridden hands. I’m gonna have the grossest knot of scars on my palms from that dickbag key, I’m calling it now.

I sprawl limply across Marco’s chest again, and he fills me in on the rest. Besides the ear situation, there are long claw gouges across my neck, my shoulders, my upper arms, all deep enough to be really gross. The cuts on my right temple are just scratches in comparison. No more broken bones, at least, which is a relief of sorts. Oh, and a huge bruise on my ass from being dropped and dragged, but that’s about normal for me.

Door number one, done. My body is royally fucked, and Annie is out for whatever blood I have left. 

Only thing left now is door number two.

I wish Marco didn’t have to deliver this news. I’m too afraid to ask if there’s someone else who can do it, though, because I have no idea what happened after I blacked out. I don’t even know how we got out. Shit, I don’t know where to _begin_ here. All my options are relatively shitty. 

I don’t have to tell Marco this. He knows. Significantly better than I do, in fact, so there’s no better time than now for him to start getting it off his chest.

Holding him close, I let him get himself together enough to tell me what happened.

“S-so, um,” Marco starts, his voice already shaking. He takes a deep breath, leaning into me for a moment. “Christa’s been filling me in where she can. Armin, Mikasa, and Levi are alive. Armin’s physically stable, but he’s really not doing okay. He’ll be staying here for a while. Mikasa has a broken arm and some pretty serious cuts, but she’s already up and around.” Pausing for a moment, Marco squeezes my fingers, and dread sends chills running over my skin.

“They think... the doctors think Levi might not walk again.”

My eyes shutter closed. I lean my forehead into Marco’s cheek, more than a little dizzy.

Fuck.

“I-is he awake?”

“Yeah, but he’s not talking much right now.” He sighs, shifting to kiss my temple softly. “I don’t know if he’s okay.” 

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

I pause. “And, um...”

“Eren’s alive too,” he murmurs, running his thumb over mine. Before I can ask, he says, “Like, _really_ Eren. Christa had to do some of her work, but he’s holding on, and it seems like he’s got some sort of control most of the time for now. He’s in a quarantine.” Marco nuzzles me gently, letting me digest all that.

Levi’s in a wheelchair, Armin’s traumatized, and Eren is some whole new level of possessed, but they’re alive. Alive. 

“What about Hanji’s body?” I mumble, already trying to think of a way, _something,_ scraping the bottom of the barrel for some kind of undo button, but Marco shakes his head slowly.

“When we were getting out, Armin and I were the only ones who were conscious. He had to carry Mikasa, Levi, and Eren, and I had to carry you, s-so we swore we’d come back for Hanji. It seemed wrong to leave them there, you know, b-but you... oh, you were bleeding so much, and it was soaking through my clothes, a-and. I couldn’t think right. But you were breathing, and Levi had a pulse, and the moon had set enough that Mikasa changed back when I took her collar off, and...”

His voice is shaking again, his hands sweating, so I squeeze his hand and murmur, “It’s okay, love, we’ll go back. We’ll get them.”

Marco sobs softly and buries his face in my hair, rolling toward me and wrapping himself tighter around me. He shakes his head, squeezing my waist, and whispers, “I-I came out first, and then Armin, and o-once he was out of the hole, O-Old Trost... it was like an earthquake, a bad one, and I—I couldn’t think, things were falling and—and then the wall, the big wall, it _cracked,_ s-so we ran, and it...” He pauses for breath again, shuddering and wet, his hand fisting in my hospital gown. “Wh-when we passed the g-gate, it all f-fell down. All of it. The ground, the buildings, the walls. J-just like that. Like a s-sinkhole. Th-then it filled up with this awful black soil, s-smelled like a fire.”

I’m holding him tight to me to try and help him, to try and soothe him, but it feels more like I’m just clinging to him while my head spins. “I-it’s... gone?”

“A-all of it.” He sounds so tiny, so afraid, his breath unsteady and rocking with tears. “It’s gone, and Hanji’s... I-I left them, I—”

My eyes widen, and I wiggle until I can force him to look at me, his teeth gnawing at his lower lip and his eyes streaming. Fuck. “Hey, h-hey,” I say, running my hand down his soaked cheek. “Don’t go there, love. C’mon, I know you, you did what you could.” His gaze falls, but I jostle him enough to catch it again. “Armin was carrying _three people,_ and you were carrying me with one bum arm. There’s—there’s no way you could’ve brought them too. Don’t go there, Marco,” I plead, kissing his bitten lips until his teeth let up. Then I kiss him again, finding a faint taste of blood where his teeth had found a weak scab, but I ignore the coppery tang and the salt of his guilty tears.

“Th-they,” he starts, interrupted by a slight hiccup. “C-could Christa have—I mean, they were—”

“Don’t, sweetheart,” I repeat, as firmly as I dare. It hurts, but I nudge my nose against his anyway, reaching up to scratch soothingly behind his ear. He has a scab there I’d never even noticed. “Don’t do this to yourself, please?” Another kiss, another shuddering breath. “Everyone else got out. You and Armin, you saved everyone else. Hanji was...” I swallow, forcing down my own rising misery in favor of easing Marco’s. “You saved us, Marco. As scared as you were, you still figured out who was left and put them first. That’s the important thing, okay?”

He sniffs, yet more tears slipping from between his soaked eyelashes, before he reaches for my hand again and squeezes. After a moment, and with some whispered encouragement, he nods, and I let him burrow into the crook of my neck and hold onto me for a while.

Sometimes I think Marco’s the truly strong one of us, my pillar of strength, the one who always remembers how to breathe no matter what we’re facing. Probably my rose-tinted glasses. 

In times like this, I remember that he’s just as broken as I am, just as affected. He’s strong, but he’s not invincible. He’s not immune to panic, nor to guilt, nor to depression. I’m not the only one that lost Hanji, and I wasn’t even conscious to help him get out. Instead, Marco was basically alone with a likely-panicking Armin, completely soaked in my congealing blood and running out of time to save four fading lives. Still, he did it, but Hanji lies interred under the ashen remains of that ancient, haunted shithole and all of the horrible things that lived in it.

Once again, it’s Marco’s turn to let go in my arms, to let out his pain and to let me tell him it’s not his fault as I wrap myself around him and hold him safe and warm.

We don’t fucking deserve this, but at the very least, we still have each other.

\--

Compared to the rest of my walking corpse, my legs are totally fine, aside from a few light cuts by my knees. More tokens from my fight to imprison Godeater. Honestly, they’re more like paper cuts than anything, given how serious that bastard’s talons are.

After a good long while of hardcore cuddling, and after Marco’s run out of tears and begun to relax for me, I start getting restless again. No big surprise there.

Marco lets me get up and walk around the room a few times, but it does me no good. Pacing in an area this tiny doesn’t exactly get the juices flowing. I don’t even have to move my IV stand. Room’s basically a closet. 

At least there’s a shower, though, so I boil my flesh until I finally feel clean for the first time in ages, if a little like an overcooked lobster. Marco carefully washes around my stitches, running his finger just under the length of every cut so I have a good idea of what I’m dealing with. By my estimates, my upper back is roughly ninety percent stitching thread. Great. I must look like I got the wrong end of some rather aggressive shrapnel.

The tattered clothes I’d come in ended up in a furnace, naturally, but Marco managed to finagle a second set of scrubs before he’d gotten locked in, so at least we match.

“I think Levi’s still on this floor,” he says, running his hand through my still-damp hair with a relieved sigh. “Mikasa’ll still be with Armin, wherever they ended up. I have no idea where Eren is, though. Just that he’s locked down.”

I shrug idly, easing the IV needle out of my arm once the screen says the bags are done. “If we need to see him, Levi’ll know how to find him.” Marco hums and nods, gently running his fingers over the cuts across my left cheek. “Seriously, how bad is my ear?”

He sucks on his lips and raises his eyebrows. Pretty bad, then. Marco’s always had a horrible poker face. “At least you still have, uh, most of it?” I drop my head with a sigh, all of my ten million stitches giving an irate tug, then shoot him a crooked smile. “I’ll miss your industrial, though.”

“Aw, it got ripped out?” With a wince, he nods. That sucks. Thinking about it kind of makes my balls hurt, so I stop, instead standing to stretch as much as my frankenskin will let me. “Lame. Whatever, I’ll just get one on the other side. You ready to bust out?”

“I think so. Annie shouldn’t be here right now unless she changed her schedule, so we should be safe.”

“Damn scary-ass titan girl,” I grumble. For good luck, I lean up and kiss him again, and he hums gratefully against my lips.

Sweet little criminal that he is, Marco had managed to keep some small tools on him, tucked just under the edge of his cast on the inside of his upper arm. He knows me so well. With what he’d smuggled in, picking the lock is absurdly easy. I don’t know why they even try. Admittedly, it’s a little harder when I can’t move my busted wrist all that much. Still, I pop it open after a few tries, and Marco leads me quickly down the hall and around the nurse station to Levi’s room.

He looks better than I’d expected him to. Meaning, not only is he conscious, he’s sitting by his window in a wheelchair. That’s about the ass end of ‘better than expected,’ though. Erwin looks up from where he’s taking up the entire bed, his thick eyebrows raised in surprise. I give him an idle wave and grab the visitors’ chair, then drag it over to the window. Standing up for a long time is still kind of an ordeal. Probably still feeling the effects of the blood loss.

I plop my sore ass in the corner next to Levi, shifting around in the hard plastic for a moment. He doesn’t look at me, not yet. I sigh quietly.

Even without his recent shit prognosis, Levi’s demeanor is completely understandable. Out of all of us, I imagine he’s taking Hanji’s death the hardest. I know he knows about it, too. Even if he’d been unconscious when it happened, which I imagine he was, he and Hanji have always had this weird psychic link. Way stronger than most. Almost like they were twins. And now the other end is completely dark.

This has to suck.

“Thank you for elaborating on that,” he grouses suddenly, crossing his arms.

I click my teeth and run my hand through my hair. “Stay out of my head, then.”

“I thought you might be thinking something useful. My mistake.”

Rolling my eyes, I lightly kick one of his wheels. “I literally just got out of my cell, cut me some slack, grandpa. Jesus.”

Behind us, I hear Erwin ask Marco to accompany him for coffee, and they duck out together. Subtle, guys. Hopefully no one recognizes Marco and catches on to our jailbreak. I look back at Levi, taking in his unusual pallor. It’s kind of surprising that he’s already up, I’m not gonna lie. 

He huffs a sigh. “The break wasn’t major, but a bone shard from one of my lumbar vertebrae severed my spinal cord. Permanently.” The only indication he gives that this bothers him is a slow blink. Steel trap, this man. There’s no way that’s entirely healthy.

“Shit, man.” I rub the back of my neck, searching for something to say. Not my forte, and he knows it. Still, I try, and that has to count for something. “You know, they do some crazy shit with stem cells these days. Maybe there’s hope.”

“We’ll see.” 

I purse my lips idly. Can’t help but wonder how Mikasa feels about this. She’s not prone to attacks of self-loathing, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen her wallow. Probably for the better. We can’t _all_ be incapacitated by guilt, not on top of how busted-up we all are. We’re doing the best we can with what we have. Even so, this situation fucking sucks ass, every little piece of it. Godeater needs to fucking die.

As my mind wanders, Levi stares out the window for another long moment, then wheels his chair around to face me. “We need to figure out how to finish this.”

I swallow nervously. Hanji was the one with all the plans, all the lore, all the insane knowledge, and now...

“We’re going to their temporary lab,” he says, crossing his bandaged arms over his chest. “Tonight. It’s probably a pigsty, but everything they thought they’d need for this job will be there.”

“What about their home lab?”

“Taken care of.” 

I hum. Probably Sasha and Connie, they’re the most mobile of all of us. Even if they don’t know the gross details of what we’re up against, they’ll get anything we need there with what we can tell them. They’re both smart. As much as they’ve always pretended not to be.

“Okay,” I mumble finally, kicking one leg out beside his chair. He doesn’t respond, and while that’s not exactly uncommon, I still can’t help but feel the tension around him. Levi really hates shit like this, but fuck, I gotta know. Taking a deep breath, I ask, “Hey, um, are you okay?”

His eyes flick to the floor between us for a moment, his shoulders tensing just a hair. Almost unnoticeable. He mulls that over for a while, his breath slow and even, until he looks up at me again. “We have a job to do.”

“Wow,” I wheeze, immediately regretting it. If I wasn’t already leaning against the wall, I’d back up further into the corner. Gotta work on growing a filter or something. “I-I mean, uh.”

“Don’t,” he says, quietly even for him. He takes a moment to run his hands down his face, pulling a deep, rattling breath from within his palms. When his hands drop, he crosses his arms again and turns to look stubbornly out the window. “We went down there for a reason. All of us.” Another long pause. I do him the kindness of looking down at my bandaged hands. “They went to save Eren. He’s not saved yet.”

Even though it doesn’t answer my question, I think I get what he’s saying. Finish the job so Hanji won’t have died in vain. They sacrificed their life for a purpose, so it’s up to us to make sure that sacrifice doesn’t go to waste.

My sinuses burn again.

Before I can clear my throat, change the subject, distract us both, he mumbles, “Their sacrifice already means something. Four of my kids are safe, and we’re at an advantage to save the fifth.” I blink up at him, honestly surprised, but he’s still staring out the window. “Their death wasn’t ever a waste.”

Rather than respond, I turn to look out the window too. The light of the setting sun dyes the sparse clouds in brilliant shades of orange and pink.

\--

Before we head to Hanji’s lab, we decide to stop by Eren’s room, just to see if he can be of any help. Assuming he’s conscious.

Assuming it’s really him in there.

He’s being kept in a quarantine room in the infectious disease ward, feasibly because it’s the safest lockdown in the hospital. Erwin uses his endless oozing charm to distract the nurses we don’t know so Levi, Marco, and I can slink into the room. We can’t skip the automated decontamination protocol, but there’s no point in wearing the glaring yellow clean zone suits hanging to the side. It’s not like we can catch what he has, and even if we could, a layer of yellow rubber and a paper respirator wouldn’t be enough to save our souls.

Once the door to the room slides open, Marco ducks over to close the blinds. It’ll buy us time.

Meanwhile, I gape at the bed in disbelief. And the walls. And every flat surface in the room. Levi’s rubbing the bridge of his nose exasperatedly.

“Um,” Marco says quietly, coming to stand beside me. “When we were waiting for the ambulance, I was praying. And he was still unconscious, but he flinched at the name of God. S-so, uh.” He scratches the back of his head and smiles sheepishly. “So I told them he’s very deeply religious, and prone to violent fits unless the Lord surrounds him. And that he has a ruthless lawyer.”

Jesus, that’s clever.

I stare up at Marco, then turn and try again to take in the truly absurd variety of crosses in clear plastic bags littered around the room. There’s gotta be close to forty. Plus, Eren’s well and truly strapped down to the bed, cuffed in like some kind of horror movie mental patient. Probably for the better.

“It seems to be keeping him weak, if anything,” Marco hums, pulling his own cross out of his shirt to chew on the cracked end. 

“That’s quick thinking,” I mumble, reaching over to gently pinch his side. “Good work, Sherlock.”

He flashes me a small, grateful smile, but I know he’s gotta be proud of himself. It really was a good call, especially given the alignment of Godeater’s demon horde lunch. 

Eren’s eyes are closed, so I can’t tell if they’re back to normal or not. He’s got a thick bandage wrapped around his head, and he seems to be missing his other antler, so I’m guessing they went ahead and sawed that off. Shit, it’s not like he needs it. The hand he’d broken is solidly encased in plaster, too. The other one seems fine, even though I distinctly remember it having been on fire. Not even slightly crispy now. Hilariously, they trimmed his blackened talons down to a manageable size, but his hands and forearms are still stained a pitch black that seems to creep up toward his shoulders like gangrene or something. Gross. 

His shoulder’s taped up, but the leather strand pokes out from between the wrappings, covered in plastic wrap or some shit. Good, they left the key in him. That’s one less grey hair for me, I guess.

I sigh heavily, breaking the awkward silence. Really wish I had a cigarette.

Levi rolls up beside Eren’s bed, studying him intently for a moment before reaching over and poking him in the stomach. How scientific.

Eren groans and shifts slightly, and for a second I can’t honestly tell whose gravelly voice that is, and the idea sends me dizzy. Marco grabs my shoulder tightly, either bracing himself or keeping me from keeling over, I’m unsure which.

“Calm down,” Levi says. “It’s him. Mostly.”

_“Mostly?”_

Groaning again, Eren’s eyes flutter open, and I can’t decide if I’m relieved or not. On one hand, the usual piercing green’s back. 

On the other hand, the whites of his eyes are now completely pitch-black.

It’s incredibly unsettling.

When he speaks, his voice is terrifyingly raspy, and chills race down my spine again. It’s just Eren, though. No rattling. He just needs water or something.

“L-Levi, I—”

“Hush,” Levi interrupts, cautiously leaning forward. “We don’t have much time. Can you tell us anything?”

Eren shifts uncomfortably, wincing at what I imagine must be a whole world of pain. His breathing is labored, kind of crackly. I need to sit down. There’s nowhere to sit, though, so I just lean heavily on Marco. He doesn’t mind.

“I-I—” Eren twitches, squeezing his weird eyes shut. “H-he’s hurt, but I can’t—he’s doing something, he’s still in here, Levi—”

Levi reaches over and grips Eren’s blackened hand, soothing his searching fingers. “Don’t piss him off.”

Sagging slightly, Eren takes a few heavy breaths, licking his dry lips anxiously. I’m guessing Godeater’s too weak to fully possess him again, but he’s still awake enough to be a shithead. If we can even get anything past him, it’ll have to be in code. I can’t even imagine what that must be like. 

It’s not like a regular old spirit is possessing him, Godeater is _powerful._ Powerful enough to change Eren’s body completely, to fuck with him even when he’s being suppressed by a cursed object and an army of crosses. That kind of possession...

I glance up at Marco for a brief moment. He’s still chewing anxiously on his cross.

Shaking my head, I look over at the bed again, just in time for Eren to open his eyes and stare up at me.

“Jean— _fuck—”_

Levi squeezes his hand to quiet him before he tries to speak again. Eren squirms under his restraints, panting raggedly, and even from here I can smell him like a punch in the face.

Eren’s breath smells like Godeater, and Godeater _reeks._ He stinks like metal, like the pungent steel smell that fills the air when you sharpen a knife, but a thousand times worse. Too harsh to just be blood. It’s like a damn gun factory or something. It’s _dizzying._

“Don’t mention me, dude,” I blurt. Don’t want Godeater getting overexcited. 

Between short, shallow pants, Eren squints up at me again, and he manages to whisper, “Y-you control the cage.”

I frown, confused, but Eren yelps and arches hard against the straps, his legs kicking under the sheets, digging his heels into the thin mattress. Marco startles beside me, looking frantically for the call button, and Levi groans as his eyes roll shut.

“L-Levi,” I sputter, standing utterly helpless at the foot of Eren’s bed as he writhes in agony. The bandages on his chest bloom red, bullet wounds splitting open with his tensing and twitching, and there is literally _nothing_ I can do.

“Quiet,” Levi snaps, leaning up to cover Eren’s eyes with his hand. Almost immediately, Eren calms down, falling back into the crisp sheets and shivering out a long, slow sigh. Asleep. Thank fucking god that worked.

After taking a moment to check Eren over, making sure his bandages don’t soak through any more and that he’s still breathing, Levi straightens up and immediately wheels toward the door.

I guess that’s all we’re getting.

Before I enter the decontamination chamber, I turn to look back at him again.

Dwarfed by an army of religious iconography, his body twisted and blackened by a towering evil slowly breaking him down from within, Eren twitches in the fitful rest of the possessed.

\--

“’I control the cage,’” I repeat slowly, probably for the thousandth time. 

“It has to mean something useful,” Marco sighs, leaning down to investigate the two unenthused gophers still caged in the corner of Hanji’s borrowed lab space under Trost University’s chem building. Thought there were three. Oh well. “Eren knew anything he told us would set Godeater off, so out of everything he must know by now, _that’s_ what he chose to say.”

 _“Ugh,_ ” I wheeze, probably for the millionth time. 

We’ve swept Hanji’s lab from floor to ceiling a few times now. Opened every single damn cabinet, every drawer, checked out the busted fume hoods, flipped through what few dusty old textbooks there are, _everything._ They were meticulous in hiding anything that would arouse suspicion. Even Levi looks stumped. I hop up to sit on a lab bench so he doesn’t run over my foot for that on his next pass.

I know exactly what cage Eren meant. It’s not like I’ve forgotten those nightmares, the ones that started this whole ugly chain of events a while back. _‘His devil is long-caged,’_ Grisha Jaeger had said every fucking night, right before the salt water of his eternal damnation filled my lungs and drowned my sleeping mind. That’s not the hard part.

 _How_ do I control it? What good does that do? It’s not like I can just crawl into Eren’s brain and cram Godeater back into his cage. I wouldn’t want to, anyway.

I want that vile motherfucker to _burn._

Running my hand irately through my hair, I kick my feet and try to get my shit straight while Levi and Marco keep searching.

Before I can get too far, though, the door to the dingy lab creaks open, and all three of us freeze.

A familiar blonde mop ducks into the room, wheedling anxiously before he’s even stepped in all the way. “Doctor Zoe, I’m not coming back for good, but I thought you should know I had a thought on the—” Moblit finally looks up and catches my very anxious stare.

Fuck.

I totally forgot about Moblit. _Fuck._

“H-hello, Jean,” Moblit mumbles, stepping a hair away from me. “I came to see Doctor Zoe, are they here right now?”

My mouth falls open, but no words come out. I just gape at him, starting to sweat slightly.

Thank god for Marco. Kind, sweet Marco, who quickly steps between us and rests a gentle hand on Moblit’s unworthy shoulder. “Moblit, could you sit down for a moment, please?” he asks quietly, steering the twitchy blonde into the nearest chair. Levi rolls up beside me and crosses his arms, unaffected by Moblit’s widening eyes.

“You’re—oh, Mr. Levi, are you—?” He swallows, glancing between Levi and I, already starting to fidget in his chair as he takes in our collective damage. Marco pulls up another chair from somewhere, sitting carefully beside him, and Moblit turns to him again as he asks, “Is Doctor Zoe here? I need to tell them something, it’s, um. Kind of confidential—”

“Moblit,” Marco interrupts, leaning toward him. “There’s something you need to know.”

“I-I quit,” Moblit says, wheezing an entirely unconvincing laugh. “If there’s something awful coming, I’d really, um. I’d rather not know. I’m sure Doctor Zoe can handle it. I just came for a few minutes.”

This is _excruciating._ Marco sighs, not out of impatience, but to prepare himself. Out of the three of us, he’s the best person for this, as much as I wish he didn’t have to.

“Last week, Hanji came with us under Old Trost. They told you about that, right?” Moblit stares hard at Marco and nods vaguely. “It... it didn’t go as planned.” Slowly, cautiously, like he’s approaching a spooked rabbit, Marco reaches over and rests his hand on Moblit’s forearm. “They didn’t make it, Moblit. I’m so sorry.”

A thick, awkward beat slugs past us. I’m sweating. So is Moblit. His brow furrows, feet shifting, glance flicking between Marco’s face and his soothing hand.

“I-I don’t,” he finally stutters, his voice quiet with confusion. “I don’t understand. They didn’t make it where? Back here? Are they in the hospital?”

Levi curses quietly, drawing Moblit’s wide gaze to us. I stare hard at the floor, mouth dry.

“They were killed,” Marco says, as gently as one can possibly say those brutal words.

“I’m sorry, I still don’t understand,” the blonde manages, audibly shaking, words rising in volume with his frustration, or maybe his denial. “They—no, they couldn’t—they were _doing_ things, they had a lot of research to do. The—the lycanthropy trials, they aren’t done yet, Doctor Zoe hit a roadblock with them last week. A-and the alchemy projects, and the translations, there are a few of them still. They aren’t _done_ yet.”

Moblit’s blubbering. I swallow the lump in my throat and scrub my own tear-sore eyes, unable to look at him yet. This is so fucking awful.

He only gets louder, more frantic. “H-how did they—what do you _mean_ killed? Where are they, their—their body—I don’t understand, I only spoke to them last week, it—Mr. Levi?”

The sharp sound of Levi’s slap cuts through the air, jolting the room into a silence so awkward and heavy it might actually kill me. I run my sweaty hand down my face, fingers shaking, before I chance a look over there.

Marco looks severely taken-aback, Moblit’s eyes are bugging, and Levi’s still gripping the blonde’s shirt in one fist.

Harsh, man. That’s one way to bust hysteria, I guess, but Jesus.

Levi speaks before Moblit recovers altogether, firmly and evenly, leaving no room for doubt. “Hanji Zoe is dead.” 

His pale hand shaking, Moblit presses his fingers to his reddened cheek, and his gaze falls to his lap as Levi releases his collar. “O-oh,” he whispers.

“We still need their help, though,” Marco says delicately. “We haven’t finished the job yet. Moblit, do you know where their research is? Notes, books, anything that might help us. Have you heard them saying anything about a Black Tamanous?”

Moblit nods slowly, still holding his cheek, before he looks back up at Marco. “Th-they’re... they’re dead?”

I could puke. My twitching fingers grip the edge of the bench. 

“I’m so sorry, Moblit,” Marco breathes, biting his lip. He’s flushed a little, trying to keep it together in front of Moblit, but he’s damn close to tears.

For a minute, he’s silent, looking slowly between the three of us for some hint of a lie, some horrible joke, but none of us are fucking laughing. When he sighs, his breath is shivery, weak, and we all do him the favor of looking away as tears start to fall.

His hitching, wet little sobs fill the air, shoulders shaking as the grief starts to set in, but he stands anyway and staggers past me, toward the chalkboard at the back of the room. Fuck, I’m a horrible sympathy crier, it’s no secret. I sniffle piteously into my sleeve.

Moblit reaches under the blackboard’s tray and pulls, sliding it up into a hidden recess in the wall to reveal a line of messy shelves stuffed with weird-looking books and jars of god-knows-what. That’s more like it. I hop off the bench and wipe my face off, moving to inspect the contents of the shelves.

It’s like Moblit’s moving through a haze. Probably is. I can’t look at him without choking up, though, so I just watch him pull down a thick pile of notebooks and journals, handing them to me silently. A few books, a dusty pile of post-its, some stapled-together graph paper.

“Thanks, man,” I murmur, shifting the stack more comfortably onto my forearms. He nods, but he doesn’t look at me. I leave him alone when he stops handing me shit.

While Marco and I spread everything out, taking stock of what we have, Moblit stays where I left him, shoulders starting to shake again.

Fuck.

\--

I have no idea what time it is when my brain throws in the towel.

I’m sprawled on my back along a cold lab bench, staring up into Hanji’s chaotic handwriting, searching for something, anything that we can twist into a plan to take care of this. As always, though, their cognitive leaps are far beyond the reach of most mortals, and I find myself getting more and more lost the more I read. 

Levi’s been staring at a diagram of the Pacific Northwest for what feels like a century, and Marco’s taking a break to bury his face in his elbow and groan.

Ugh.

The smell of dry ink and paper and maybe some kind of spice fills my nostrils when I give up and drop the notebook directly on my face. It hurts. Dammit. 

Apart from the obvious pain of personal loss, Hanji was _not_ a member of the team we should have lost. 

We all relied so heavily on them, on their problem-solving and their planning and their fucking unbelievable knowledge base. Even their weird occult connections. 

My brain keeps slyly suggested ways we could’ve stopped this from happening. If we’d had a better plan, or a plan at all, or if I’d run a little faster, or if we’d just brought one more team member, or if the stars had aligned just a hair to the left. I don’t know why, it’s not like hindsight can bring them back now.

Moblit left a while ago, not a word to any of us. We let him. What the hell could we possibly say? Man was in love. I know that feeling.

Marco sits up with another, more frustrated groan, probably raking his hand through his hair again. I wouldn’t know. I’m trying to absorb Hanji’s intelligence from their fucking terrible handwriting pressed against my busted face.

The drugs have long since worn off, too, and _wow_ everything hurts. Like, _literally_ everything. Things I didn’t even know I had. If you can name it, mine fucking hurts, bet ten bucks.

At some point, the door opens again, but none of us bother to shift. It’s just Erwin, anyway, I can tell by the smell of food that accompanies him.

“I brought help,” Erwin rumbles, setting down a pile of pizzas somewhere above my head. When was the last time I even ate? Feels like a month ago, fuck.

I pull the notebook off my face and blink up at him, finding my view blocked by a rattling white bottle.

“Whassat?” I ask, taking my sweet-ass time sitting up to spare my aching everything.

“Nothing fun,” he replies, handing me the bottle of ibuprofen. Shit, I’ll take it. “How’s it coming?”

Levi clicks his teeth and rolls over to me, snatching the bottle and opening it for me. Apparently me and my one functional hand had been taking too long with the damn childproof cap.

As he stands and stretches, entirely enticed by wafting pizza smell, Marco turns to look up at Erwin. “Not so hot, honestly,” he admits. Erwin sits down and reaches for the thick tome Levi had been spacing out over. “We’re not even sure where to begin,” Marco continues, holding his hand out to me without looking. I drop a good few ibuprofen into his palm. “All we know is the guy’s name, what he is, and what he’s eaten. A few weaknesses, but nothing we aren’t already using. The lore’s so scant, even relative to what we’re used to.”

After washing down an inadvisable number of ibuprofen, I cram half a slice of pizza into my face, watching Erwin calmly take stock of what we have.

Truth be told, even though I’ve worked with the guy for years, I’ve never actually _worked_ with him. Not like this. He’s mostly a broker and a guy with a lot of really shady connections. I have no idea what he’s capable of. I don’t even know how he and Levi ended up in cahoots. I guess it doesn’t really matter, not in the grand scheme of things. 

“So,” Erwin says after a while, blinking up at us. We must look like a pack of wild fucking dogs, with how we’re eating. It’s been a long couple of days. He continues as if we weren’t each hoarding four slices of pizza in our chipmunk cheeks. “You haven’t gotten anywhere? Where’s Moblit?” I shrug, struggling to swallow. 

He sighs, running his finger across his lips, before he flips through one of the notebooks and rips out a blank sheet of paper. Marco hands him a pen, politely covering his mouth. Without further ado, Erwin takes over our search, a silent machine of scanning and scribbling.

\--

I will be the first to admit that I’ve always been _terrible_ at coming up with plans. Marco’s way better at it, but he’s still unsure of himself at times. I don’t know why, the dude’s clearly brilliant. Talking an infectious disease ward into flooding a room with crosses? Fucking genius. I never would’ve thought of that shit.

Marco and Erwin do their thing. They get along suspiciously well. Two smarty peas in a genius pod. 

Meanwhile, Levi and I absolutely take a nap. I’m tired as fuck, and I’m no good at this game anyway.

I sleep fitfully, but I hadn’t expected any less. The lab bench is made of a freezing-ass slab of rock, it’s not the fucking Hilton. Still, I’ll take the shuteye. Shutting off for a while is nice.

When I snort myself awake, I am immediately accosted with the aching consequence of sleeping on a freezing-ass slab of rock, and I have no problem making my misery very apparent. Marco blinks up at me with a tired smile, but immediately goes back to the notebook he’s scouring, occasionally pointing out a passage or note to Erwin.

I roll onto my back and yawn, stretching my arms above my head and shaking some of the numbness from them.

I’ve only been spacing out for a few minutes, still trying to wake up, when the door opens yet again. Most action this lab has seen in years.

“U-um,” comes a rough, mousy voice, catching my tired attention. Moblit’s standing beside me, his face a mess and his eyes bloodshot, lips raw from biting and blood along his chewed-down nails. He looks a damn wreck. He’s holding something, though, fiddling with a bookmark stuffed into a raggedy-looking leatherbound journal. “This was at my apartment. I thought... thought it might help.”

I blink up at him, cautiously taking the journal, and he stares at me pointedly. “Um,” I mumble, squirming under his unblinking gaze. “Thank you?”

“You’re in it.”

My brow furrows, and Levi sits up and turns to look at me. “What, like, hall of shame?” I joke weakly, staring at the intricate design pressed into the worn leather cover. This one smells like spice too, the same spice as the others. Can’t place it. Better than bile, I guess.

Moblit sighs, crossing his arms tightly. “Please look at it, Jean.”

Wow. No pressure or anything. I blink, glancing back at Marco, who raises his eyebrows encouragingly. Ugh. I look back at Moblit, settling back into my reading position, but before I start, I ask, “Am I gonna like what I find?”

He runs his hands through his hair, already standing all kinds of on end. “That really depends on what you’re willing to do to kill this thing.”

My gaze falls to the book again.

This asshole killed one of my favorite people, fucked up most of my family, traumatized all of us, and is firmly parked in someone I’d tried and failed to keep safe for a decade.

Anything. 

I’m willing to do _anything._

Taking a deep breath, I open to the bookmark and jump in.


	8. Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This will work. This _has_ to work, because I refuse to let it end here. 
> 
> I have to keep my promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)

_XV: Soul’s Flight_

_..._

_XV.06: Somnivagance._

_In rare cases, those whose souls have departed their bodies but managed to come home again develop the curious ability to ‘drift’ through space in a manner similar to that of lost spirits._

_While the truly dead spirit is confined to the mortal realm of existence, however, the returned spirit has a much further reach, sometimes even stretching across several physical and psychic planes. This is possibly due to power derived from the normal organic functioning of the body to which they are tied. The returned also tend to be more powerful than the dead, usually able to maintain and control focused physical contact without the necessity of a distressed emotional state. (Need to test whether the returned are able to possess a living human. Find willing subjects.)_

_Those who possess this extraordinary ability are largely unaware of its existence due to the nature of its activation; namely, the closer the user is to death, the stronger it becomes. From my research, I have found that the benchmark for ‘closeness to death’ in this case appears to be the user’s blood flow. Heart rate and blood pressure are usually lowest during non-REM sleep, so the sensation and experience of their soul ‘drifting’ is frequently mistaken by the user for vivid or lucid dreaming. Users with low blood pressure are particularly adept at controlling their manipulations, again due to unusually diminished blood flow at rest._

_I am still uncertain as to the full extent of the relevant applications to the field, but data thus far show that non-undead creatures whose manipulative domains lie within the psyche of their victims are vulnerable to expulsion or destruction using this ability. Further research is needed regarding application to varying types of undead possession in particular, but I am optimistic._

_15th March 2014: Spoke with subject at length about the incidents surrounding Ragnarök. Reported regular prophetic dreams and visions before conflict. One confirmed death and subsequent necromantic soul reattachment, possibly his second. Curious._

_4th July 2014: Griped about blood loss during ‘jobs with sharp assholes.’ Offhand mention of chronic low blood pressure._

_11th April 2015: New dreams reported. ‘Strange dreams’ of sleeping gods. Investigate._

_17th April 2015: Levi confirms subject’s several visions of off-cycle deities, regarded as ‘fucking boring-ass talkshow dreams.’ Seemingly unaware. (Subject would much rather dream of his partner’s skill with polearms. Objectively, his sacrifice benefits my ongoing research. Subjectively, I really can’t blame him.)_

_25th October 2015: Given the nature of his recent dreams surrounding the Eren mystery and his history with the psychic planes, I have strong support for my theory._

_I firmly believe that Jean Kirschtein may be one of these ‘dreamwalkers,’ and a uniquely powerful one at that._

\--

There’s no real way for me to explain how I feel having just read those words.

I mean, shit. What exactly was Hanji saying? What did they mean, _dreamwalker?_ Are they trying to say I can fucking travel to distant planets in my sleep? 

Now that I think about it, though, Godeater mentioned something during our little dirt nap. Something about having spoken with gods... did he really mean my stupid talking dreams? Of course I didn’t fucking revere those, they were _dreams._

Or, I thought they were dreams.

I read the passage cautiously a few more times, taking in Hanji’s oddly-legible chicken scratch pressed into the yellowing pages of this tattered journal, the different shades of ink keeping track of their observations of me and my dumb dreams. I soak up those scribbles over and over, but all together they just don’t make sense to me.

All those weird, too-vivid dreams I’ve been having... were real.

I spoke to gods.

They are _boring._

After a while, I sit up slowly, blinking over at Marco, who’s nose-deep in that book on Pacific Northwest folklore again. The same book I know he’s been studying for ages now, combing through for any mention of the Black Tamanous and finding only bare hints and vague scribbles.

Moblit looks up at me from his chair, his posture weirdly expectant. 

I have no idea what to even say.

Guess I’m a dreamwalker.

Or something.

\--

“There has to be some way we can use this,” Marco says, our good hands firmly entwined. Thank god, because even though I’m still perched on the cold lab bench, I’m feeling kinda light-headed again. “Levi, you said Eren wasn’t entirely alone in his head, right?” Levi nods. “Then Jean should be able to manipulate him with this ability. That must be what Eren meant when he said that you control the cage, Jean,” Marco murmurs, ducking his head slightly to catch my eye. I hum vaguely. He notices my distraction, of course, he always notices, so he turns to face me and nudges his hip against my limp knee. “Hey, you okay?”

I sigh slowly, raising an eyebrow as I ponder my answer to that very loaded question.

If I take Hanji’s journal at face value, it would appear that I have some kind of superpower. Regular old lucid-dreaming Jean Kirschtein. An hour ago, I was just me, nothing special. Same as I’ve always been. And now...

Marco gets me. He presses a warm kiss to my not-fucked cheek, and another few for posterity, until my shoulders relax slightly and I look a little less constipated. 

Even so, I need air. For some definition.

I look over at Levi, who reaches up onto the lab bench for one of the packs of cigarettes Erwin had brought. With a brief kiss for Marco, I leave the nerd squad to their planning, and Levi lets me wheel him to the elevator and then out to the rain-slick sidewalk.

We sit in silence for a while, me with my sore ass parked on a low wall, both chain-smoking in the early, misty grey morning. It’s not like we need to speak. I doubt Levi’s getting anything useful out of my few fragmented thoughts, so he lets me be, giving me space to sort through what this might mean for me.

It’s obvious that we have to utilize this power of mine to get rid of Godeater. Which, if I’m reading Hanji’s notes right, means that I have to face him and his enormous stolen power inside Eren’s fractured mind.

Alone.

I shakily light another of Levi’s cigarettes, something like the fourth. At least he smokes menthols. He reaches over and thumps my shoulder, silently commiserating. He’s not correcting me, either, which he would if he thought he had any reason to. If there was any reason that he could find within his numerous years as a crabby but gifted psychic to hope that I wouldn’t have to do this by myself.

With a loud, sudden creak, the door to the building opens behind us, and Moblit trips out over the brick we’d used to prop it open. I hope he doesn’t ask me for a cigarette, good lord.

“Your associates reported to Mr. Erwin,” he starts. Guess he means Connie and Sasha. “Doctor Zoe had me bring over relevant resources pretty frequently as the case progressed, but it seems those two didn’t find anything immediately helpful in their search of the rest. Everything Doctor Zoe had at their disposal is downstairs.”

Well, shit. At least we have everything Hanji knew right in front of us, though, that’s a start. I nod my acknowledgment and take a slow drag off my cigarette. Moblit blinks from me to Levi, obviously uncomfortable. He shivers as he rubs his hands up and down his arms, shifting his weight between his feet, and Levi stares up at him, waiting for him to stop hovering.

“Um, Jean...”

Huffing smoke, I let my aching head hang for a moment before I look up at him. “Yeah, Moblit?”

“I wanted, uh. To ask you about Doctor Zoe.” My eyes roll closed. Of course. Seemingly oblivious to my silent signals, he continues, “Old Trost’s collapse is all over the news. Government-ordered demolition because of compromised structural stability, they’re saying. I was just... wondering about Doctor Zoe’s body.”

“It’s gone, man,” I mumble, pulling another hit off my damp cigarette. The mist is thick enough that even at this distance there’s a soft, burning halo around the ember. “Thanks to Solomon’s deal, the whole thing fell apart when Godeater’s belly full of assholes left the pit. There was no way to bring Hanji back up. We had too many people who couldn’t move. I’m sorry.”

Moblit sighs weakly, scuffing his toe against the concrete. “I was afraid of that...” Another long pause, before he shakily murmurs, “Th-they would’ve loved being a zombie...”

I am by no means a patient man in the best of circumstances. Today, however, and the last few weeks in general have been _enormously_ shitty, and while I have the utmost of sympathy for Moblit, I need to make something _very_ clear. 

He jolts when I stand suddenly, using the few inches of height I have on him to my distinct advantage as I move right up into his space, wreathed in smoke.

“Listen, Moblit,” I start, ashing my cigarette idly. “I need you to do me a favor.”

“Y-yes?”

It seems like it pains him to hold my eye contact, but he does, and the combination of my mood and my appearance is more than enough to intimidate the color right out of his face.

“I need you to never. _Ever._ Say those words around Marco.”

Moblit blinks, obviously confused, his mouth flopping open and closed a few times like a fish. 

“I need you to promise me, Moblit,” I warn lowly, towering over him every way I can. “And if you break that promise, I will break your teeth.”

He pales further, if possible, but he nods and stammers, “I-I promise.”

“Good.” I turn away, piping smoke lazily upwards. 

“C-can I ask why?”

“No.”

It sounds like he draws breath to say something else, but I hear Levi moving behind me before he can. Probably strongly discouraging Moblit from pushing it any further. After a moment, the blonde skitters back inside, and Levi and I are alone again.

I sympathize with Moblit, I really do, but he just cannot keep himself off my bad side.

In addition to the complete lack of empathy he’s shown Marco in the past, I’m going to go ahead and guess that Moblit assumed Marco had nothing to do with saving all of our lives. He came to _me,_ like I’m the one that pulled five people out of hellfire and into safety. Like Marco wasn’t strong enough or something.

I’m probably just being dramatic. Still, I don’t even want to think about what kind of guilt a simple and very true statement like that would inflict upon Marco, who I suspect is still blaming himself for losing Hanji’s body. Hearing that... it’s just not something he needs to hear. Ever.

“Hey,” Levi rumbles, rolling up beside me. “Marco’s calling for you.”

“Yeah, okay,” I sigh, taking one last good drag off my smoke before I flick it out into the street.

\--

“Let’s look at this in pieces,” Erwin says, pointing to a weird stick figure diagram of the Inception-slash-Exorcist combo pack bullshit Eren has going on right now. “There’s Eren, and inside Eren is Godeater, and inside Godeater is at least seventy-two Old Testament demons. Correct?”

Marco nods, spreading out his own notes beside me on the lab bench I’ve reclaimed.

“Now, there’s no reason for Godeater to be weak to the name of God or to crosses, so we have to assume that when Godeater devoured their strengths, he got their weaknesses as well.” Erwin draws an arrow to the blob of stick figures representing Solomon’s motley crew. “We might need to neutralize them in order to take out Godeater. What else are they weak to?”

“I’ve heard that most of them dislike the ocean,” Marco says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Between the salt and the color, it reminds them too much of God. Also, there are a lot of water-based stories about imprisoning demons.”

I squint between them, suddenly reliving Grisha’s haunting in a wet, gasping flash. “Do you think that’s what my dreams were about? Like, a clue or something?” Marco looks at me and tilts his head in question. I run my hand through my hair and continue, “As the dreams got stronger, I started feeling like I was in a coffin. That’s kind of like a cage, right? And it was filling up with salt water? I thought it was an echo of his death, but now who the hell knows.”

Marco nods vaguely for a moment, then visibly perks up and shuffles through his notes. “I saw something in here... yeah! There’s a lot of lore about ravens that comes out of the Pacific Northwest, and one of the legends says that anything supernatural that takes water has to find land before the raven calls, or they’ll perish. There’s a lot of inherent fear of drowning in that region, from what I’ve seen...” He pauses, then looks cautiously at me.

I think I know where this is going. Fuck.

As I dig the heel of my hand into my eye, Erwin speaks up for me. “That might be it, then.” He turns and draws stupid little waves over his scribbles of Godeater and his lunch. “Jean, you might have to relive those dreams with this power of yours. If you can get close to him, box him in, and flood out the cage, then summon a raven’s call...”

“You’ll weaken the demons, and simultaneously leave him susceptible to his own lore,” Marco finishes quietly, reaching over to rub his hand gently across my shoulders. 

“How do we know this will work?” I ask feebly, staring between them, then down at Levi.

“I’ve spent a lot of time with Doctor Zoe’s research,” Moblit says cautiously, keeping a safe distance from me. “We don’t know much about the Black Tamanous, especially not how to kill one. The only time they’re ever mentioned being destroyed is when the lore talks about their major deity killing them off with all the other primordial Evils. We only know that they can be imprisoned in brass, much like Old Testament demons.”

“I don’t want to imprison him,” I growl, trying my best to keep my petty grudge behind my gritted teeth. He cowers regardless. “I want him _dead.”_

“Then this is the best we have,” Moblit squeaks. “Salt water is the only overlap in the lore that could lead to extermination, at least that I can see. Oh, um, th-that’s a good call, Marco.” 

Marco beams over at him, going full-tilt with his portable rays of sunshine. God, he’s sweet. I should probably learn a thing or two from him at some point.

“Isn’t there a way to get him out of Eren? Face him on this plane?” I ask. Anything. I don’t care if I sound weak or scared. I don’t want to have to do this alone.

Moblit swings around to ruin my day once again. “He _really_ shouldn’t leave his host. These things wield evil like a virus. If he leaves of his own accord, Eren will succumb to the lingering hunger, and he’ll eventually become another Tamanous.”

I throw my hands up. “Fucking swell.” When Marco wraps his arm around my waist and squeezes, I lean my head onto his shoulder and begrudgingly accept his soothing smooches. “So I have to go in there.”

“Seems so,” Erwin replies, turning to consider the overcrowded chalkboard again.

Levi pipes up for the first time in a while. “How’s he gonna get in?”

Shit, that’s a good question. I hadn’t even thought about it. I have literally no idea how to control this apparent superpower of mine. Marco shifts guiltily beside me, though, and looks down at a quietly-clanking Dulcinea. She’s been well-behaved lately.

“Hey, Jean,” he mumbles, his hand fisting slightly in my hoodie. “Did you, um. Have you found a gold coin around here?”

Oh, shit, I forgot. I shake my head.

“We hadn’t found the coin yet,” Moblit supplies quietly. “I was supposed to fly to Spain to dig it up, but...”

Marco sighs heavily, his face falling further. My brow furrows, but before I can ask, Marco says, “The, er. Hanji’s shot is wearing off. I’m losing my connection with Dulcinea.”

“Where’s their bag? Maybe we can shoot you up again,” I suggest. Marco shakes his head, though, biting his lip and frowning.

“While you were upstairs, Dulcinea and I spoke about the terms of her contract, and... well, I don’t really agree with her suggestion—” Dulcinea clanks violently at this, startling the bejeezus out of me. “I’m sorry, Dulcinea, but I really don’t—” More clanking, which wrings a frustrated sigh out of Marco. I just raise my eyebrows. 

“What, love?” I pinch lightly at his side. “What’s her idea?”

He runs his hand down his face and stares up at the ceiling, then turns to face me. “Do you remember when we went to see Pixis, but Melinoë summoned fire titans to ambush us?”

I grimace loudly. “How the hell could I forget?” As cool as I’m trying to play it, I still reach a shaky hand out and hook two fingers in the warm pocket of Marco’s jeans. 

It’s not like I’ll ever be able to forget what happened there.

“Well, if you remember,” Marco continues, tapping his own foot agitatedly in opposition to Dulcinea’s gloomy clanking. If that’s a thing. “She pulled the titans out of spirits acting as doors. Apparently, that’s a power granted to the dead once the tie to their physical body has been severed. They can use their essence as a portal between planes. And when I was wondering earlier how we could get you into Eren’s head, she volunteered this power.”

“Okay,” I say slowly. “What’s the catch?”

“She’ll—no, he deserves to know—Dulcinea will be destroyed. Not freed, or passed on. Just... gone.”

My stomach churns dizzyingly. 

I may not believe in the Judeo-Christian fluffy white heaven, but dammit, I have to believe that the spirits I’ve been freeing all these years have _something_ promising going for them. Not just oblivion.

“And she _volunteered_ for this?”

Marco huffs, staring pleadingly at me. “She insists that she’s had more than enough of an afterlife to suit her. She says she’s ready to be done. Jean, I don’t—I’m _sorry,_ Dulcinea, _creo que—”_

I grip Marco’s shoulder firmly, catching his attention once more before I glance over at the others. “Is there _any_ other way we can absolutely guarantee I’ll get into Eren’s head?”

Moblit chews his stubby nails, and Erwin looks at Levi, who stares blankly up at me before shaking his head. Biting my lip, I look back at Marco, whose gaze falls to Dulcinea as his eyes fill with tears.

“I-it’s not right,” he whispers, his voice shaking with frustration. “It’s not right for her to just... disappear. Not after all she’s done.”

I know I don’t have to tell him that her monumental sacrifice is not only our best hope, it’s our _only_ hope. He knows. With a shuddering sigh, he relays her plan to us, not looking away from her slowly-tapping toe. 

“She says that once Jean is asleep, she can present herself to him and create a door into Godeater’s world. A-and that once he passes through, she’ll... she’ll fade.” His breath hitches, but he scrubs the tears from his sore eyes and blinks up at me. “She wants to help you, Jean. T-to make up for falling for his trap under Old Trost. But mostly to get her piece of the revenge pie, you know?” I blink questioningly. “She insists that the only reason you had to break off from the group down there is because she fell for Godeater’s illusion, and she _really_ hates being tricked. So she wants to h-help.” Marco glances down at her again. “She knows what it means for her.”

With a heavy sigh, I look down at her too. “Thank you, Dulcinea,” I say, and I really fucking mean it. 

She’s giving up heaven or whatever for this shaky plan, one that she’s well aware might not succeed.

“S-she says she’ll speak with you soon,” Marco murmurs, biting his lip again. 

I nod, then turn back to Erwin. “So what do we have so far?”

Erwin purses his lips, drawing a few more lines across the board, before he turns to me and crosses his arms. “I know it looks like a lot of pressure on you, Jean. But if anyone can do this, it’s you.” I grimace, mostly just to hide my flush. Positive evaluation never did sit well with me. “I think in order to prevent you from waking up too soon and to give you the most control, we should sedate you for this. Is that okay?”

Shrugging limply, I squint at his messy diagrams. “Not much choice, I don’t think. I’m a light sleeper.”

“Okay.” Erwin runs the tips of his fingers over his lips before heading into his breakdown, cool as a damn cucumber. “First, we’ll put you under. Probably at the hospital, so we can monitor your vitals just as a safeguard. Dulcinea will create a portal into Eren, where you’ll presumably have to face Godeater.” Looking up at me, a brief flash of pity crosses his stern face. “Resist him, and do your best to recreate those dreams. After the cage and the flood, imagine a raven crowing. We’ll look up what they sound like.” Erwin sighs, glancing back at the board. It’s the bare bones of a plan, and we all know it.

Levi steals my thought again, staring pointedly at me. “There’s a lot we don’t know, but it’s the best we have.” 

“What if it doesn’t work? What if the lore clashes?” I ask, chewing my nails agitatedly. Marco reaches up and gently tugs my hand away from my mouth. “The water, the raven... what if I do all that, and he just laughs and throws some demon bullshit at me? How can I fight him?”

“Theoretically, it’s the dream world,” Moblit says quietly. “Dreamwalkers have the psychic advantage, whether it’s their own mind or not. And Doctor Zoe was adamant that you are the most powerful dreamwalker possible.”

“How the hell could they know that?” I spit. I’m starting to sweat again. I want to believe in this, I really do, but for fuck’s sake, I’m just... _me._ Not exactly a warlock here.

Moblit sighs, pulling a small notepad out of his pocket and flipping through it. “There were a lot of complicated calculations that went into their theory. It wasn’t just a hunch. Considering your long-standing tendency to wander between planes, the amount of dark magic animating your body, and the contents of your dreams, Doctor Zoe believed that you have abilities beyond even their own.”

“Wait, what?” I tilt my head, eyes narrowing in confusion. “What do you mean, their own?”

Levi speaks up, catching the kinder edge of my attention. “Where do you think they learned all this shit? They’ve seen every cycling theology, something no one else has ever seen.” He glances up at me. “No one but you.”

... Oh.

My gaze falls to my dangling feet.

Yeah, I guess that makes sense now. I’d never really understood how they managed to see all the shit they did, but I’d never been dumb enough to ask before.

Guess I really should’ve.

“There’s another thing to consider,” Moblit mumbles, walking over to the chalkboard. He points to Erwin’s dopey-looking raven doodle, tapping the dusty board a few times as he gathers his thoughts, before he turns to me again. “The lore around the raven says that _anything_ supernatural must regain land before the raven’s call. Jean, when you’re drifting, you are technically a supernatural being.” Marco stiffens beside me, but I’m mostly unsurprised. Of fucking course. Moblit continues anyway. “We have no way of knowing that the raven’s call won’t affect you.”

I can _hear_ Marco’s internal hamster wheel working overtime. It seems to disturb him greatly when all I can do is shrug. He wheezes my name quietly, placing his hand on my knee, so I smile up at him. Hopefully reassuringly, but I really doubt it, so I say, “Love, this whole plan is based on conjecture. This is just more conjecture.”

 _“Jean,_ ” he pleads, shifting anxiously, “It’s conjecture that I’m _really_ hoping _works._ But if it works on him...”

“There’s a fifty-fifty chance, as I see it,” Levi rumbles, crossing his arms idly. “On one hand, not your lore, not your problem.”

“On the other hand, though,” Erwin butts in, “If your power creates an environment where this works, you might accidentally overpower yourself.”

Marco’s still staring nervously at me.

Sorry, babe. I’m fucking pooped.

Closing my eyes, I take a few deep breaths, then look up at him again. I know he can see my resignation, how fucking _done_ I am with this piece of shit demigod. Resignation tends to make me reckless. Gives me an overall attitude of ‘why the fuck not?’ Marco frowns at me, obviously frustrated, so I gently tug him in by the collar of his shirt and kiss that look off his face as best I can.

“I’ll do my best,” I whisper against his lips. Dulcinea gives an encouraging clank, and Marco shivers out an anxious sigh and turns to bury his face in the less-fucked side of my neck in response.

“Okay,” Erwin breathes, running his hand through his immaculate hair. I guess _one_ of us has to be good-looking, for morale or whatever. Levi snorts.

Just to clear the air, I repeat the plan for general scrutiny. One more time, with feeling.

“So, I go under the nap gas. Dulcinea shoots me over to Eren-land. I face Godeater, flip him an enormous middle finger, and give him a salty bath to weaken his buddies and ideally leave him open to his own weakness. Then I throw a bird at him. And then poof, no more Godeater.” I spread my hands. “Sound legit?”

“How will we know if you need help? Or when you’re done?” Marco asks, shifting to page through his notes. “We won’t be able to see what’s happening. All we have are Eren’s and your vitals. I don’t know, Jean...” He turns to me again, reaching to run his knuckles down my cheek. “I _really_ don’t like this, love. I don’t like that you have to do this alone, and that there’s no way to know if you’re okay. I don’t even know if we can pull you back into your body by waking you up if we have to.”

“We can’t know if time works the same way between planes, either,” Moblit adds, ever the bearer of bad fucking news. No time limit, then. Not much point with as blind as we’re flying. I sigh, running my hand up and down Marco’s bandaged forearm.

“I can’t watch when you’re in Eren,” Levi says, wheeling himself in front of me. “Whatever Godeater’s doing in there, it’s a fucking migraine.” He looks up at Marco, his expression surprisingly soft. Well, soft for Levi, which is about as soft as a damn cactus. “But I can glance in from time to time, and I should be able to keep watch on Jean’s filthy mind. If he comes back through, or if Eren settles down, I’ll know.”

Blinking down at Levi, Marco seems to sag slightly as he nods. “Thank you, Levi.”

It’s about as much relief as we can hope for. Marco turns and searches my gaze, his eyes slowly filling with exhausted, frustrated tears.

He knows, though. This shitty plan is all we have, and we’re running out of time.

I pull him to me again, nuzzling into his warm neck, and I tune out the rest of the boring logistical shit in favor of murmuring soft comforts against Marco’s skin. He needs them more than I do right now.

It’s gonna be a long fucking night.

\--

We sneak back into the hospital and set up camp in my still-empty room. Reiner pretends we weren’t even gone, probably more to save his own ass from Annie’s wrath than anything else. While the others get the sedation situation handled, Marco tries to get me to take a nap, but there’s no point. I’m too fucking amped up to sleep. I’m about to do some hard-mode sleeping anyway. He accepts that with some difficulty.

Between failing to release Dulcinea and sending me alone into a game plan that may as well be a flashing sign that reads ‘here’s fucking hoping,’ Marco’s about to lose his mind. He can’t stop pacing and chewing on his cross, only stopping on occasion to flip through the notes piled on the table at the end of the bed. I know better than to suggest that he try to sleep, or even relax a little, so I just watch him pace through the room. He’s back on the cane now. I guess he really is losing his link to Dulcinea, like Hanji had ensured would happen.

Marco repeats the plan under his breath, restlessly searching for logical holes and trying to find patches for the enormous gaps in our theory. I’m not even thinking about it. I’m just staring at him.

Even now, the heavy circles under his eyes darker than his bruises, his hair literally standing straight up from running his hand through it, his shirt starting to dampen in places with worried sweat, Marco’s fucking gorgeous to me.

I might not come back from this. Fifty-fifty chance at best. I am entirely aware of that.

This isn’t just some lucid dream. This is a weird cosmic showdown with a hyper-powerful demigod who may or may not want to gnaw on me for my newly-discovered superpower. Not like I can blame him. I can talk to _gods,_ like Jerry fucking Springer. Ten bucks says that’s the source of Godeater’s bulletproof hardon for me. He could sneak up on and devour literally every deity in existence with my power.

Well, I’m not trying to get eaten, but if I do, I really fucking hope my wide variety of crippling weaknesses at least leaves him curled up in a corner somewhere crying. Vengeance from within, motherfucker. Death by self-doubt.

Even with all this shit looming in front of me, I’m feeling weirdly numb. Overstimulated. Ready to fly by the seat of my pants. I’ve listened to about seven hundred raven calls by now, so I’m already sick of them. I know what has to be done.

At least my shitty nightmares are coming in handy. I know _exactly_ what this dream should look like.

I’m startled back out of my introspection when Marco stops pacing and squeezes his eyes shut, a few tears slipping down his cheeks.

“Hey,” I murmur, reaching my hand toward him. “C’mere, love.” He glances over at me, eyes bloodshot from sleeplessness and worry, before he shuffles over and parks it heavily on the edge of my bed.

“Jean, I know we don’t have a choice,” he mumbles, reaching over to run his good hand through my bangs. “And I know it’s the best plan we have.”

“So quit pacin’.” He snorts at me, and a weak flicker of a crooked smile crosses his flushed face. Wish it wasn’t framed by another few tears. 

“I can’t help it,” he breathes, shifting closer and leaning in to kiss me softly. “It’s just... I’ve never not been able to back you up.”

“Sure you haven’t,” I say, resting my hand idly on his waist. “Remember when that troll pasted you to that old rustbucket pickup truck under the bridge? I managed then too.”

“That’s _different,_ ” he insists. Damn, the troll story always makes him laugh. I put on a more serious face and let him continue. “I was incapacitated then. I’m not incapacitated right now. I just...” He sighs, digging the heel of his hand into his eye. “I just can’t follow you where you go.”

I feel a flash of déjà vu. I’d worried about this same damn thing when these dreams first bubbled up, these awful hints from Eren’s repentant father. I guess now I get why he expected me to do something about this sooner, although why he couldn’t have used his fucking words is beyond me. Regardless, I remember distinctly the fear of having to face those nightmares without Marco, and now I’m doing it all fucking over again.

This time, though, there’s a tiny flash of optimism. It’s framed by the shakiest logic and the shoddiest plan, but there’s still a reason to endure the terror. Some hope that I can overpower Godeater in his own den, if I’m as powerful as everyone seems to think I am.

I’m already set on this plan. Nervous, sure. Doubting myself, absolutely. 

But I’m also optimistic and bull-headed.

That has to count for something.

“You made a good call, Marco,” I whisper, trying to soothe his nagging fears. Always double-guessing himself. He blinks at me, then scoots closer and leans onto my chest, Dulcinea tapping steadily against the cold hospital linoleum. Wrapping my mangled arms around his shoulders, I rub my cheek against his soft, disheveled hair, taking a deep, calming breath. “It’s a good plan,” I murmur, my words slightly muffled by the mouthful of cowlicks I get.

“I really hope so,” he sighs. “I just keep thinking... what if I missed something? What if I’m putting you in danger for no reason? What if there’s another way?”

I shrug lazily. “If there was another way, you would know, Marco. I know you. You’re a meticulous-ass nerd. And it wasn’t just you, anyway. You had Erwin and Moblit backing you up.” I brush a few soft kisses through his hair. “If there’s a better answer in what little we have, you would’ve found it already.”

“I guess so.” Marco runs a tired hand down his face. “I wish Connie and Sasha had found something...”

“Hanji sent Moblit back a bunch of times for everything they thought they’d need, remember?” I nudge Marco up for more kisses, brushing away lingering sticky tears with my chapped lips. “You have everything Hanji had.”

Marco nods minutely and sits up with a groan, closing his eyes as he rolls his likely-aching neck. I watch him, reaching out to rest my good hand on whatever part of him I can reach. Physical reassurance.

I’m not just saying this stuff to appease him. I’m a shit liar, anyway. Marco’s honestly brilliant. As I see it, this plan was mostly his idea, and it’s something I never could have put together, even without the constantly-looming catastrophe brewing. With his quick brain, I have a fighting chance. A shitty, scary, lonely fighting chance, but it’s better than the fuck-all I had before.

He turns to me and graces me with another weak, lopsided smile, then reaches over and rests his shaking hand on my cheek.

“I love you, Jean. No matter what.”

Even though I’m so used to hearing them, his words send a tide of comfort over me, teasing out any lingering anxious knots in my chest and setting my heart at some kind of ease. Peace and quiet. That thing he gifts to me with every gentle touch, every soothing word. That thing I never really understood as perfectly as I do right at this moment.

The desperately-needed pause for breath of a perpetual motion machine.

The words slip out before I can think twice about them, the words I’ve been chewing on for almost a year. The words I figured I’d be brave enough to say someday in the future, when I would deliver them flawlessly in some beautiful, poetic moment.

This moment between us is imperfect, vulnerable and full of hurt and worry, but at least the words match.

“Hey, Marco,” I breathe, catching his hand in mine. “Marry me.”

His eyes bug out. It’s kind of adorable, if mildly worrisome.

“Wh-what?”

I shrug, running my thumb over his knuckles. “Wanna spend the rest of my weird-ass life with you. Drive you nuts for years to come. Age gracelessly with you. Dunno how much aging exactly, but however much longer my dumb choices last me, I want you there with me. Kinda sounds like marriage if you squint.” I dip to kiss his hand, maybe possibly to sweeten him on the idea. “What d’you think?”

He’s still staring at me, his eyes huge and filling with tears again, but I’m not quite expecting his sudden reaction.

He rips his hand away from mine and grips my shoulder, jostling me slightly, and he’s really crying before I can think to apologize for my lame-ass proposal. I gape at him, watching tears pour down his face, until he sobs, “Jean, w-why are you asking me _now?!”_

“U-um.”

Slapping his hand against his forehead, Marco squeezes his eyes shut and whimpers, “I c-can’t believe—you’re about to— _God,_ Jean, your timing is _so_ —i-infuriating!” He scrambles to kneel on the bed beside me. I stare wide-eyed, unsure what to say or whether to wipe away the tears now dripping from his chin. “I’m w-worried sick and sore and I’m sweaty and we’re b-both all b-busted up and w-wearing old s-scrubs, and you’re about to—and you’re a-asking me that _now?”_

He sits back on his heels with a loud huff, scrubbing at his streaming eyes with his good hand. I blink, swallowing nervously, before squeaking, “Yes?”

Marco groans, tilting his head back, and I swear he’s praying for patience between his shivering exhales. He pauses, though, then gets right back in my face with a slightly worrisome fire lighting his pretty eyes. “Where’s my ring?”

All I can do is wheeze at him. I did not think this far in advance, not beyond romantic daydreams. Leaning closer, he stammers, “Y-you have to c-come back and g-give me my ring.” He blinks yet more heavy tears out of his watery eyes, grabbing my good hand in his and squeezing. “Th-then—then I’ll m-marry you. I-I will. But you have to c-come back and give—give me my ring.”

My eyes shutter closed for a moment, a giddy, bubbly sort of relief exploding all through my chest, before I move my hand to curl over the nape of his neck so I can yank him into a loud, wet kiss.

“I’m coming back,” I whisper raggedly between kisses, letting him suck gently at my busted lower lip. “I’m gonna come back and I’ll get you the _perfect_ ring. A-and you’ll love it, I swear.”

“Y-y-you’d better,” he whimpers, crawling into my lap as he wraps himself around me and kisses me harder, more desperately, his hand shaking hard where it’s fisted in my shirt. “You’d better come back, J-Jean Kirschtein, b-because I-I’m gonna marry you, and w-we’re gonna m-move far away from th-this place. S-start over. B-but first y-you have to come home to me.”

“I swear to all these sleeping gods, sweetheart,” I murmur, crushing him tight to my aching body. “I’m gonna come home. C-come hell _and_ high water, ideally.”

Marco huffs, tugging my intact ear sharply. “D-don’t make jokes at me, Jean, i-it won’t w-work.”

I smile up at him as he leans our foreheads together and tries to catch his hitching breath. “’S worth a try.”

He pulls on my ear again, letting out a sound that’s somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and he doesn’t pull himself out of my lap even when Reiner rolls in my good old beeps and boops to get me set up for this awesome, perfect, definitely-gonna-work plan.


	9. Little Lion Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is my last steady breath, my last moment of quiet, the last moment I have to stretch my wings before I must force myself into the gale. And it _still_ fucking sucks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)

After Reiner hooks up my vitals, he leaves again to bribe his anesthesiologist, and there’s a good few minutes where Marco and I are alone again. We spend the time wisely.

The soft sound of our lips parting is nearly mute under the constant, steady rhythm of my living heart beeping a relaxed tone into the quiet, as is Marco’s shuddering little sigh. I squeeze the back of his neck comfortingly, shifting my gentle kisses to the corner of his eye, to his temple, to the old, pale scar through his eyebrow. His tired gaze cast to our laps, tears rise yet again and cling to his long, pretty eyelashes, so I kiss those away too.

“Jean,” he breathes, leaning into my chapped lips, “C-can... can I ask you to do something for me?”

“Anything,” I murmur, nudging his forehead to try and catch his eyes again.

His shaking hand rises to his cross where it hangs between us, his fingers tracing slowly down well-worn wood before wrapping around it. He tilts his head and pulls it off, then finally looks at me again as he presses it lightly to my chest.

“I-I know...” He pauses and swallows, searching my gaze before his eyes fall again to his offering. “I know it’s not your faith, and that you have history, a-and I know this is selfish of me to ask, b-but...” Breathing another wavering exhale, he leans in and nuzzles his face against mine to ask, “W-would you wear it? It’s the only way I can g-go with you. S-sorry, you don’t have to, I’m just—”

“Marco.” He blinks up at me, letting me kiss him once more, slow and sweet. When our lips part again, I nod, then whisper, “Thank you, love.”

With a low sigh of relief, he squeezes his eyes shut and nods as well, then carefully slides the leather strand over my head. The cross settles against my chest with a comfortable weight, soothing and almost warm. All the things I’ve come to associate with Marco’s faith, and none of the lingering thorns I used to know. Not even a hint. 

“I just want to p-protect you,” Marco says quietly, biting his quivering lip.

I give him a warm, honest smile and nod, gently resting my forehead against his. He sniffles a little as his good hand fists in my shirt, his eyes sliding closed again.

I know he’s scared. He’s not gonna tell me so, not right now, but he doesn’t have to at this point. I can tell that he’s terrified out of his mind, going crazy with worry about sending me into a darkness he can’t help me face, and I can’t blame him. If I wasn’t so damn exhausted, I’d probably be pissing myself a little.

Still, I focus on kissing him some more, and I whisper sweet comfort against his lips, and with as much as I swear to him that I’ll be okay, that I’ll make it, I’m starting to really believe it myself.

Optimism is one of those weird things I’ve started learning from him. I used to bitterly think it was just a crutch for the dying, or something that didn’t happen to damned souls like me. I used to go into shit like this completely expecting that I wouldn’t come back out. The only reckless bravery I could ever seem to find stemmed from the fact that I didn’t care if I died or not.

I care now. A lot. Because I have someone who knows exactly what I’m going through and who’s there with me, something I never had before him. I have someone that I’m _honest_ with for the first damn time, who knows why I still wake up crying and who knows how to calm me down. I have someone who worries for the exact same reasons I do, and who worries about _me_ in particular. 

On top of all that, that someone I have is _Marco,_ who’s so good and wonderful and so damn optimistic that it blinds me. He is like the grand master of finding silver linings in the worst, darkest fucking places in any universe.

So yeah. I give a lot of shits about my life. I have a lot going for me, even aside from the heaping pile of goodness that comes with loving and being loved by Marco.

Between the desperate desire to live thundering all through my chest and the knowledge that I’ll have some sort of control, I really think I can do this.

It’s gonna fucking _suck_ like nothing else ever has, and yeah, that is terrifying. But Marco’s probably gonna be holding my vegetative hand the whole time I’m gone, and I now have the love of his God hanging around my neck to help keep me safe, and that is a damn good place to start.

\--

“When you’re in there,” Levi says, parked beside my bed with his arms crossed, “You have to remember that you’re not bound by the same rules. Consciously using psychic power is hard to get used to, but you’ve been doing it subconsciously for years anyway, so I expect you to not fuck up.”

“Thanks,” I wheeze. “I think. Wait, was that a threat or an expression of confidence?”

“Whatever motivates you more.”

I roll my eyes at him. “Is it gonna be like when I dream? Like, I just sort of...” I push my hands awkwardly in front of me, raising my eyebrows hopefully. “Use the Force?”

He stares at me. Doesn’t even blink. Dammit, that’s weird. “How the hell should I know?” he barks finally. Helpful. “Your freak powers are your own, just use the damn things.”

“Levi, have I ever told you how deeply I appreciate your fatherly support and guidance in all aspects of my life?”

Levi jerks his chin at Marco, who’s standing awkwardly on the other side of my bed. “Babying you is his job.”

“Him?” I jerk my thumb at Marco with a laugh. “He stands for _none_ of my shit. I’ve never been babied less. I want a refund.”

“You don’t like being coddled,” Marco mumbles, poking his lip out at me.

“It’s true.” I turn and shoot him a smarmy smile, reaching out to pat his hip fondly, but he just sticks his tongue out at me.

“My point is,” Levi interrupts, his nose wrinkling slightly at us, “Nothing is as it seems in there unless you make it so.”

Sighing softly, I nod at that. Sage advice, honestly. I’ve fallen victim to bad-guy delusions in the past, and Godeater certainly does not pull his damn punches with that shit. I blink down at Marco’s cross, reaching up to brush my thumb over the long crack for a brief moment. It’ll be a good anchor for me, something to remind me that wherever I’m headed, whatever it looks like, it’s not _reality._ It can be whatever I want it to be.

Having control is really unusual for me, but it’s a damn good feeling, I must say. That might just be my nerves talking, though.

Marco runs his good hand through my hair, brushing my bangs off my face with a soothing hum. 

Beside me, Levi turns to stare at the side table for a moment, obviously mulling something over before he huffs quietly and says, “As your other honorary parent, shit like this was usually Hanji’s job.” I raise my eyebrows, turning to blink at him. He doesn’t look back over at me yet, instead glaring at the water jug for a beat before continuing, “You might not believe it yet, but you’re a powerful psychic, Kirschtein. Always have been. You just never realized it because the things you see and feel are normal for you.” He sighs, running a hand through his hair. “You’ve never been ‘regular old’ _anything,_ kid. That’s why you’ve always been on the menu.”

I look down at my hands, swallowing the lump in my throat. I kinda doubt I’ll ever get used to that strange idea. Shit, I’ll take it, don’t get me wrong, but I guess I always just expected being powerful to feel extraordinary or something. It never occurred to me that maybe my ‘normal’ is someone else’s ‘extraordinary.’

Leaning my head back, I close my eyes and try to relax a little, already feeling like I’ve been stretched kinda thin. Wish we had time for a practice run or something.

Levi lets our conversation settle, brooding quietly in his chair, and Marco sits on the edge of the bed and holds my hand while we wait.

\--

For as fucking tiny as this room is, it sure does fit a lot of spectators in it. 

Marco gets spousal dibs on the only chair, which he gladly parks right beside my monitors in prime worrywart position. Levi sits next to him, looking extremely perturbed at the overwhelming density of human flesh in here.

Reiner’s back with his guilty-looking anesthesiologist in tow, who hums loudly whenever any of us start talking. He must be new to this end of the hospital. Admittedly, I’m kinda surprised that he doesn’t want any juicy details. People usually want to know what weirdness they’re being paid to cover up.

Moblit’s back too, ready to take notes where he’s lurking by the window. Guess he un-quit or something. He has something tucked up the sleeve of his dorky sweater, something he’s obviously trying and failing miserably to conceal. It doesn’t look terribly sharp, so I don’t give it much thought. 

My stomach’s turning in circles now. Marco squeezes my fingers every time I start fidgeting, which is nice, but the heavy anticipation isn’t doing me any favors. 

A handful of floors above us, Eren’s already knocked out in his cell, since we have no way of knowing what sort of state he needs to be in for this to work. Hanji hadn’t gotten around to testing that part yet. Their best theory so far, according to Moblit, is that I won’t exactly be possessing Eren as much as I’ll be haunting him, which obviously works best when the hauntee can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what’s a nightmare. Plus, we’re willing to jump at any chance we can get to make life hard for Godeater if shit goes south. An unconscious Godeater is the preferable kind of Godeater.

Well, aside from a fucking dead one.

At any rate, Sasha, Connie, and Erwin are up there with him, ready to carefully observe that half of this wild little experiment. Data collection aside, they’re also the most intact fighters we have right now, and they are all heavily armed. Just in case.

Standing at the foot of my bed, Reiner crosses his arms over his ridiculously purple scrubs and looks me over. I shift under his intense stare. This goddamn awkward silence is starting suffocate me, so I give Reiner an awkward nod, then ask, “So, uh, how’s Bert doing?”

“Waist-deep in dead people, same old,” he replies bluntly. The doctor, Franz or something, starts whistling the William Tell Overture. Fucking weirdo. Reiner stares through the back of the dude’s head for a moment, then back down at me. “Did you think about what I said?”

I sigh, nodding slowly. “You were right, man. But I still have this last job to do. I can’t walk away.”

He scratches one hand through his short hair, shaking his head. “Stubborn ass... tell me one thing. This job, it’s not gonna cause me _trouble,_ is it? I’m getting tired of waddling around with this many feds crammed up my ass all day.”

“It shouldn’t, no,” I sigh, raising my voice to talk over the whistling jackass sticking an IV into my less-mauled arm. “Just finishing things up, then you’ll probably be good to move Eren down here.”

“Well, that’s something.” Reiner takes a deep, steadying breath as Franz’s shrill soundtrack crescendos aggressively, a muscle in his clenched jaw twitching. He closes his eyes, exhales loudly, then barks, “Hey, Franz.”

The doctor looks up at him, his nostrils flaring. “Yes, Reiner?”

“There might be two very cranky people carrying loaded guns in this room right now. I’m not telling you who. Knock it the hell off.”

That shuts him right up. I wheeze a dry laugh, nodding my gratitude to Reiner. I was this close to elbowing the guy in the nards, anyway, which isn’t the best shit to pull on the dude who’s putting me down for a nap.

Grumbling quietly, Reiner shakes his head, then says, “This is the safest shit we can give you without fucking Doctor Bach over here lurking in the room the whole time, but it’ll do the trick. Marco, if you need us, or if anything happens, you know where the call button is.” His face pale, Marco gives him a tiny nod.

Franz pokes loudly at the screen on the IV stand, looking extremely constipated, and once he’s set the IV drip going, he books it out of there without another word. What a charmer.

“Lame. He’s usually way less of a stick in the mud,” Reiner mutters as he rolls his eyes. He hovers for another long moment, looking me over again before he pats the foot of the bed in some sort of solidarity, murmuring, “Custer’s last stand, huh.”

I grimace at him. “Didn’t Custer _die_ in his last stand?”

“In this timeline, maybe,” Reiner replies with a shrug. “He sure didn’t have the multiverse’s cutest necromancer keeping an eye on him, though.”

That gets a laugh out of me, albeit a mildly strangled one. It’s all I’ve got. With one last encouraging smile, Reiner ducks out, shutting the door behind him.

Knowing Christa’s around tonight is yet another point in my favor, although honestly she’s probably keeping closer tabs on Eren. If this is a long, rough night for us, it’ll likely be the longest, roughest night he’ll ever have.

Over in his corner, Moblit exhales shakily, letting a long, thin piece of wood slide out of his sleeve. I quirk an eyebrow as he sets it on the windowsill, along with an equally long plastic bag and a lighter, before he cracks the window open a bit. 

“Doctor Zoe usually burned this to strengthen their hold on the dream world, and to help keep them safe when they were drifting,” he mumbles, pulling a long, rusty-looking stick of incense out of the bag. “I, um, didn’t think they would let us burn it here, so I... didn’t ask.”

I shoot him a crooked smile, lazily shaking my fuzzy head. “You’ll make a good felon yet,” I snort, and my words seem to fluster him pretty hilariously, given the way he fumbles with the incense. I can smell that shit from here, Jesus. It’s definitely the spicy smell that had stuck to all of Hanji’s journals, though, and that had clung faintly to the edges of all their dingy little work spaces. 

As he holds the lighter to the tip, it sparks just a little, then starts smoking gently, and yup. That is most certainly a Hanji smell. Not even one of the gross ones, either. Moblit inhales deeply, shakily, then sighs quietly, his soft breath briefly scattering lazy plumes of smoke. “It’s mostly musk and sandalwood,” he breathes, reaching over to drag his hand through the renewed upward stream. It curls around his trembling fingers almost intimately, whispering through the gaps between them before it carries on toward the high ceiling. “I know it sounds kinda gross, but they... they always burned it when they were worried or scared, and it always seemed to help.”

Moblit pauses, swallowing his cracking voice, and once again, my heart aches for him. Maybe it’s the drugs. I think they’re starting to kick in.

“I, um,” he says, his voice wavering feebly. His brow furrows for a moment before he shakes himself slightly and turns to me again. “I thought it might help you too, Jean.”

“Thank you, Moblit,” I murmur, blinking up at him. “For everything.”

Tears pool in his swollen eyes once again, so Moblit roughly scrubs them away with the heels of his hands, letting out a strained breath. When he blinks up at me again, they’re still swimming, but his gaze is lit with a decidedly determined fire.

“Take this bastard down, Jean. Bury him.” His lip quivers even as he bravely sets his shoulders. “For Hanji.”

I nod, wheezing out a wet laugh of my own. “For Hanji.”

Marco squeezes my good hand tight, so I turn my heavy eyes to him just in time to see tears streak down his face too. Levi’s pointedly staring at the ceiling.

Smiling over at Marco, I lift our entangled fingers to wipe the dripping salt from the point of his chin. He blinks his bloodshot, glistening eyes up at me, biting his lip again, before he leans up and graces me with a long, sweet send-off kiss.

I’m starting to feel like I’m floating, though, so I press my lips more firmly against his before I whisper, “See you on the other side.”

He chokes slightly, his breath a humid sob warm between us, before he breathes, “I love you, Jean. No matter what happens, just... come home.”

Before I can give him my word, time fills my tired mouth like the rising tide, and the world around me turns itself upside-down before it dissolves into sparkling sand.

\--

I feel _heavy._ Every part of me weighs a ton, and I’m too tired to even try to move. 

I’m floating again, though, adrift in the swell of an unseen, open ocean. Pretty much like the last time I went under. Guess that wasn’t a hallucination either, then. This must be drifting.

It feels like my brain’s fucking slogging through molasses. Worst superpower.

I’m exhausted and sore, and I’m floating aimlessly through all these damn stars again, with no clue as to where I’m headed, if anywhere. A tourist once more. A wanderer.

Marco had said Dulcinea would come to me. Shit, I hope she can find me in all this. 

It takes a century, but I manage to open my eyes a little more, my eyelids dense as stones and stubbornly refusing to lift more than a good crack.

My skull feels like it’s full of smoke again. It’s so hard to think like this. There’s no way I can fight when my body’s stuffed with straw and weighed down under the relentless pulsing of the dark universe. 

I have to take control. This is _my_ world now. I run this place, exempt from all its weird, surreal laws, and I can mold them to suit me if I damn well please.

Focus. _Focus._ Don’t just lay down and die, not like last time. 

My spine arches up from nothing as I strain to move my dangling arms, sweating and gasping and putting every ounce of strength I have into curling my lifeless fingers into limp, floppy fists. My eyes squeeze shut again for now, sealing out the firelight of passing stars so I can _focus._

It feels like there’s a fucking car parked on my aching chest. 

This place resists me with everything it has, trying to force me to submit to it. The pressure on my ribs is insane, crushing my lungs and smothering my heaving breath into nothing more than a gasping prayer, but I have to. 

I have to do this. 

This is _my world._ This is my trump card, my advantage, my only weapon against an ancient, twisted evil, and now I’m the only person left who can stop it.

My frail body spasms as my tired heart starts pumping, starts feeding borrowed blood into my numb, powerless limbs, and I clench my fists again until I finally feel my jagged nails dig into my palms.

Sore muscles _screaming,_ burning under the strain and crackling with showers of sharp sparks, I grind my teeth as I force my arms slowly upward, up against the crush of fabricated gravity, up above my hollow chest before they finally rattle and then give out. 

My own damn arms threaten to smash through my creaking ribcage with their fucking density, reducing my desperate panting to struggling, insufficient animal rasps. Without air, my head swims and my scarecrow body screams its drowning agony, but I can still move my hands. I can _move_ them.

I can break this.

Beneath the cross of my wrists, Marco’s talisman digs deep between two of my ribs, its sharp edge dangerously close to punching through my paper skin, but it reminds me. It fuels me. It’s my anchor.

Just like in my dreams. _Think._

My eyes squeezed shut, I writhe like a crushed ant under the powerful resistance of this place, but every tiny movement shakes loose the binding that restrains me.

I don’t have the attention span to use my goddamn imagination. Not enough brain. 

Instead, as I start to panic, as my mind begins to flare out in the violent thunder and lightning crash of my death looming before me, the primal animal part of me explodes in desperation. 

With the percussive force of a fucking _nuke,_ some energy erupts from within me and its heat and pressure shred through the unseen fist that had been crushing my tiny little bird bones.

Time and space grind to a halt around me in the wake of that supernova, an eerie silence pressing into my ringing ears, before I feel myself begin to fall. Quickly.

I have to find that power again. I’m _so close,_ I know it, and I’m running out of time.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I gasp in frigid air and _think,_ think, but my body’s spinning and no direction is up. There is no up here, nor down, nor anything to orient myself with because everything’s a rushing tide of stars and there is no solid ground.

Except what I make.

I rip my eyes open again and just flail, flinging my arms out around me to try and calm my spin, but I can’t even tell if it’s working.

No choice.

 _Flat,_ my mind shrieks as I curl my tongue and grit my teeth as hard as I can, _Flat. Solid! Level! Fucking... Kansas highways! Ground under my feet, please, come **on** —fuck you, give me **land** —_

My knees may never forgive me for the force with which they crash into some unseen earth. I topple forward onto my elbows too, panting and heaving the now-still air, trying not to fucking pass out from the echoing, gut-wrenching _misery_ of that impact. It’s dizzying, blood-curdling, sharp chills spiking along my frostbitten flesh as my head keeps on spinning for a good minute.

Fuck this learning curve.

I think I’m getting the hang of this, though. I wonder if I can genie up a motherfucking cigarette or forty, because the cold sweat beading on my firecracker skin reminds me of every panic attack I’ve ever stifled in a cloud of ash and nicotine.

Seems like the key word here is _desperation,_ because lo and behold, lit cigarette. On the invisible ground a few feet in front of me, goddammit, but there it is. I scramble toward it on my hands and knees, wheezing like a beached fish, and when I finally get my cracked lips around it, the first long drag inflates my flattened lungs and lovingly slows down the hellish thrill ride still spinning my confused-ass brain around.

Ugh. This _sucks._

I flop gracelessly onto my stomach, sprawled in this phantom dirt like Old Yeller, but fuck it. I have no one to impress here. I have this patch of dry earth and the soothing plumes of smoke I release from my flared nostrils, and that is more than enough for right now, Jesus Christ.

Kinda wish I could _see_ the ground, though. Seeing is believing, or whatever. Glancing down and seeing nothing beneath me but more dumbass stars is a weird mix of nauseating and infuriating.

Now that I’m at least sitting still, supposedly, I have the sweet mercy to let myself just lie here for a good, long minute. I’m too fucking old for shit like this, man, I don’t even ride roller coasters. My adrenaline junkie days got beaten out of me in my idiot youth. If there was even a shred of that impulse left, I bet I fucking left it four hundred miles above me. Never again. 

Grumbling mutely, I reach beneath my sore chest and wrap my trembling fingers around Marco’s cross. Good, still got it. I pull it out from under me and let it rest in my cupped palms, and its familiar shape and feel and those tiny ridges and scratches from Marco’s teeth all do wonders to calm me further. I clasp my hands around it and lower my sweaty forehead to my cold thumbs, taking a few long, even breaths as my frazzled mind wanders to his warmth.

I don’t know how long I lie there, breathing mostly smoke and drawing strength and patience from Marco’s beloved idol, but I try not to have _too_ much mercy. I’m here for a reason, after all. I went through all that heavyweight bullshit for a _reason._

With another miserable grumble, I plant my hands on my island (seems I didn’t bring my cast or my broken wrist with me, which can only be good news) and, like fucking Atlas cracking and groaning beneath the gargantuan weight of the world, drag my heavy remains upright.

After what feels like hours of my blood rushing to my head in a deafening thunderstorm, weighing my skull down and threatening to send me flying again, I shake myself out and start thinking about what to do next.

Now that I’ve fought off the stubborn, violent resistance of my apparent powers, I feel more like I usually do when I dream. Kinda like I’m standing at the bottom of a swimming pool, honestly, but that’s miles better than lying under the crushing pitch of an ocean. I guess I’d never tried to wrestle my dreams before, not to this extent. I usually just meander in whatever direction they push me in, and the most power I consciously wield is that of my loud, constant complaining.

I mean, shit. I sleep to _relax,_ not to grab a bull by the damn horns. No way I’d ever put this kind of effort into steering a lucid dream.

At any rate, I’ve tamed the beast for now. Good thing I got that out of the way before Godeater came breathing down my sweaty neck.

My eyes cross as I stare down at the ember of my cigarette. It hasn’t moved a fucking inch this whole time, but it’s definitely still dosing me with what I need. A never-ending cigarette. I’m feeling faintly religious. Things are looking up, whatever that means.

I take a good, long look around me, but all I get is more damn space in every direction. I feel like the universe’s least enthusiastic astronaut. Why couldn’t my subconscious prefer drifting through something more familiar? Maybe something with a tiny bit less existential horror? Yes, I am a grain of sand on an endless beach, I get it. I got shit to do, stars.

With a sigh, I pluck my smoke out of my mouth, then go with the first idea that comes to mind.

Hauling in an enormous gasp, I fill my lungs to bursting with cold, implausible space air, and I cup my hands around my mouth as I scream for Dulcinea. My voice is so loud it tears my throat and hurts my ears, but dammit, she could be _anywhere._

I wait for a long minute.

Not even an echo.

Fuck.

While I try to think of something, I smoke idly and curl my frozen toes into soil that I cannot fucking see. 

Marco had said she’d present herself to me, but I don’t think we were anticipating having the entire fucking final frontier as our waiting room. Is she lost here too? Is she waiting in the real world still? How much time even passed while I was getting my wobbly psychic baby giraffe legs under me?

Raking my hands through my hair, I growl to no one in particular. Think, Jean, think. I’m a goddamn wizard. What would Dumbledore do? Or Gandalf? Merlin?

After a long, frustrating moment of my brain completely shitting out on me, I sigh and collapse again, plopping my ass right on the supposed ground in defeat.

There are definitely ways to summon spirits, but usually you need something of theirs. A trinket or some hair or blood or something. A physical _thing_ to bind them to until you’re done with them. I’ve got shit diddly. A smoke, a cross, and some cheesecloth pajamas. For fuck’s sake, I don’t even have _shoes._ I’m up shit creek here.

Then again... I peer down at my cigarette again.

Huh.

My world, my rules, right?

I squint as hard as I can and try to think at max volume about buried Spanish gold. A coin for a lady, ferryman’s toll for Don Quixote’s number one girl. A hidden token of our promise to her, a long-overdue reward, the sunny flicker on an ancient treasure, c’mon...

It doesn’t matter that I have no fucking idea what this thing looks like, apparently, because the universe shits it right out anyway. With no warning, and at significant velocity.

It nails me in the fucking forehead like a goddamn bullet, _ow, fuck,_ and as it spins to rest next to my folded knee, the big-ass gold coin jingles and shines in the low light of the unknown.

“Good, great, thanks,” I gripe to the cosmic void, irately rubbing my forehead. “Guess I know not to ask for anything sharp.”

When I ask the douchebag universe for chalk, I make sure to bend my knees up and curl into a little protective ball first. It bounces relatively harmlessly off my bent elbow.

“You know,” I bitch, again to no one, “I didn’t think being a super-awesome psychic would mean being fucking _target practice._ ” The universe doesn’t respond in the least, but I’m sure it’s laughing at me. I sniff in response, drawing out the wobbly summoning seal on the nothingness before me, and luckily it shows up. Also, it’s lumpy. Fuck.

I slap the stupid, oversized coin into the center of the seal anyway and hope for the best as I mumble the incantation around a thick mouthful of smoke.

It’s been forever and a day since I had to do this, but I have no idea how I could possibly forget the _loud hot explosion of fire_ that erupts from the seal. I yelp and flop over backwards, my eyebrows probably singed clean off, but once I’ve made sure I’m not on fire, I look up again.

And up. And up, up, up, holy _shit_ that is a large woman.

“Uh,” I wheeze.

She arches a thick, extremely expressive eyebrow at me and puts her hands on her wide hips. A bajillion shiny gold bracelets clamor around her wrists like a symphony of bells or something.

“Why are you down there? Sleeping?” She’s also _loud,_ sweet Christ, her accent lighter than I might’ve expected. I make fish noises at her for a moment for lack of a better response, so she clicks her teeth impatiently and rolls her eyes with so much force that I feel it in my _soul._ “Come on, come on,” she huffs, reaching down and picking me up by the armpits like a skinny little ragdoll. God, she’s so _buff,_ and so outrageously gorgeous that it kind of hurts to look directly at her.

I dangle limply in her powerful hands, at least until she gives me a good rattle, probably to make sure I’m still alive.

“J-Jesus,” I squeak, squirming in her grasp. “Watch it, I just got my head back on straight—”

“Oh,” she hums. Pursing her lips, she scrutinizes me further, her piercing gaze like a fucking focused x-ray. I brace myself on her firm wrists and wriggle as much as I can, my bare feet kicking. Fuck, she’s like the goddess of the Amazons or something. “How long have you been sitting around?”

“I have no fucking idea,” I grouse, falling limp again. “It took me a while to get my bearings.”

“Marco is worried, you know. Your body, it went all twitchy, scared the life out of the poor thing. He worries too much, you know that? Nervous. Like a bunny.”

“I, uh. I’m aware.” I give a unenthused wiggle, my gaze flicking between her solar flare eyes and the empty space above her shoulder. “Hey, uh, could you... maybe put me down?”

She blinks a few times, and I give her my best giant, charming grin, but I kinda feel like I might just look insane. She puts me down, though, and thank god for that. My ribs were starting to ache. I look up at her, a tiny bug withering in her enormous presence. She’s like two feet taller than me, and I am not a short man. God almighty.

“Hey, uh, could Marco see you? L-like... this?”

“Oh, yes, duh,” she chirps, flipping her long, outrageously curly dark hair over her shoulder. “All the time.”

Poor Marco. Then again, he’s blindingly gorgeous and thus not at all intimidated by other blindingly gorgeous people, so I imagine he could handle it.

“So,” I bleat, desperately wishing for pockets I could stuff my hands in. Instead, like a fucking ass clown, I just shove them right down my pants, and she definitely notices. “U-uh.”

“Oof,” she huffs loudly, graciously kneeling in front of me so we can talk eye to shimmering God-eye. “He always said you were _cute._ Did you eat today? You look deathly.”

“I... cannot remember.” I tighten my lips around my cigarette, inhaling until I’m in danger of passing out to distract me from my own awkwardness.

She quirks that kung-fu punch eyebrow at me again, crossing her long arms under her—nope, no, her eyes are up there, nope. “You’re the ‘sick baby animal’ kind of cute. _Ay Dios mio,_ Marco.” I grimace, but my brain’s too fried to come up with a good rebuttal, so I just fidget. “You have no idea how to talk to good-looking people, do you.”

“No,” I reply immediately, and if my tone doesn’t confirm it, then I’m sure my nervous sweating does. She is a literal goddess. I was not prepared. “No, I do not. I just babble and lose control of my bodily functions.”

“How the _hell_ did you land Marco?” She seems genuinely flabbergasted. “He’s a catch! What did you do?”

“I, uh, saved his life with half a candy bar once,” I mumble, having the decency to lower my gaze and kick at the unseen dirt. My fucking hands are still down my fucking pants, _fuck._ I rip them out and cross them tightly over my chest.

“Oh my _God,_ ” she barks, throwing her hands up. “He’s so stupid gaga for you, and _that’s_ what you got? Not even a _whole_ candy bar?”

I wither. “No,” comes my teeny reply, crumbling further. Beautiful people kill me, man, I never could handle them. 

She sighs, planting her hands on her hips again. “Stop slouching, where’s your pride? He’s marrying your butt, isn’t he? And look, I love a sappy romance as much as the next girl, but the way Marco thinks about you made me nauseous.” I blink up at her through my bangs. She clicks her tongue again, smiling fondly as she continues, “I swear, his blood is _sugar_ or something, that boy is in _love._ Big love. So stop lookin’ so floppy, find your inner _guapo.”_

I smile down at my feet as I rock back onto my heels, significantly rejuvenated by that. Fucking butterflies, even. Not that I doubted him at any point, but still. Hearing shit like that from a third party does a man good.

“Oh _God,_ look at your face! You’re just as bad!” She throws her hands up, her vast array of gold bracelets jangling loudly. “You two are _gross._ I love it. Go home and marry your boy.”

Sighing softly, I scratch the back of my head and pull a sour face, my mood crashing again. “Can’t. Not yet.”

 _“Yo lo se,”_ she replies, her booming voice just a little gentler. “Are you ready for this fight, little man?”

I raise an eyebrow and pull another long drag off my smoke, loudly asking myself the same damn question. My eyes follow the curve of her skirt where it’s pooled beneath her knees. 

“I have no fucking idea,” I mumble finally, digging the heel of my hand into my eye. “Just standing still in this place was a fucking nightmare...”

Humming softly, Dulcinea sits back on her heels and smooths her skirt out over her thighs. “I know you’re scared. Marco does too, trust me.” She reaches out and gently pokes the cross dangling against my chest. “But you have to believe. In the Lord, in Marco, in yourself, whatever. Because if you don’t have faith, that bastard will eat you alive. Literally.”

I spin the cross between my fingers, dragging my chewed-down nail down the ridged stem just to feel the imprints of his teeth. I kinda feel sick again. Sad, scared, weak... all my ballsy optimism got squashed out of me right when I got here. I try to remember myself whispering to Marco that everything would be okay, promising to come home to him, but all I get is white noise and the sting of fresh tears.

My eyes flutter shut as I close my hand around the cross and press my cool knuckles to my forehead once more.

Fuck.

My stomach churns something awful, and my worn-out body’s starting to shake with building anxiety.

“I can’t turn back now,” I choke out, swallowing down the urge to just start bawling. “I’m on his fucking doorstep. I have to finish this, or he will.”

“I wish I could say otherwise,” she murmurs. “Remember the plan?”

“Yeah,” I rasp, taking a deep, rattling breath, before I sniffle and mumble, “Go in, find him, lock us in, and flood the cage. Then the raven. And then... I dunno what then. Puke, probably.”

“Have faith,” Dulcinea repeats firmly, letting her big, warm hands curl around my tiny shoulders. I blink up at her, copiously dripping tears. She tilts her head with an enormous, glowing smile and says, “Believe in your boy if you can’t believe in yourself. He’s got enough faith to share.”

Marco wouldn’t mind me leaning on him, either. That’s how we survive. We lean against each other and cry and hold each other until everything stops hurting so much. I glance down at his cross again, my vision swimming with heavy tears.

It’s not even that I want to be the hero anymore. I’m not Batman. Batman’s gone, sealed away for good. I just have to fix this because I’m the only one who can.

Salt droplets pool in my pale hand, slipping through the crack in the cross, but the wood seems to take the warmth of my tears and amplify it, radiating some kind of slow, sweet comfort as if from Marco’s own lips. It’s a talisman of his boundless faith, but it’s also a little piece of _him,_ of the goodness that radiates from every part of him. The wood must have soaked it in, kept it safe from the storm, and even if I have to do this alone, Marco’s echo lies right here with me. Soothing, encouraging, and as my palm fills with tears and overflows, the anxious white noise clears up and gives way like passing stormclouds for the sound of my lover’s sweet voice whispering to me.

I can do this. That’s why I’m here to begin with, because this is within my power.

Roughly wiping my face with my free hand, I drop the cross down my shirt and let it rest over my renewed pulse, an encouraging reminder of his strong chest against mine, of his heart beating in perfect time with mine.

“O-okay,” I wheeze, flicking my magic cigarette out into oblivion. “Okay.”

 _“Sí?”_ Dulcinea asks, her smile widening. “You gonna kick some scrawny cannibal butt?”

“Fuck yeah,” I blurt, my hands fisting at my sides. She lets out a roaring laugh, then stands suddenly, clapping her hands together. 

“Okay, _oso,_ I’m ready too. Let’s take him out!”

“Shit, w-wait, wait,” I sputter, stepping forward. “Dulcinea, are you—I mean, I know you said you were sure—”

“I’m _sure,_ Jean,” she replies firmly, whipping her thick curls back over her shoulder again as she sets her hands back on her hips. “I know what it means, okay? I’m a religious girl, you know. Do you know how long I sat in a burlap sack in an old mine? _Centuries._ I am _so tired_ of being a _foot.”_

“W-well,” I mumble, pointing to the lame seal somewhere beneath her fluttering skirt. “I mean, you don’t have to fade, you’re coin’s there...”

She clicks her tongue and waves a quick hand at me, cocking her wide hips forward. “I lied about the coin. No one ever trusts me when I sign up to help free of charge. They think I’m a trickster, or that I’ll eat them or something. I spun that wacky scientist some sob story about a coin from my sweet Spanish lover setting me free so they would let me _do_ something instead of sitting in a smelly bag forever.” She lifts her skirts and blinks down at the coin between her bare feet, then snorts. _“Dios mio,_ did you even _look_ at this thing?”

“Uh. No?” I grin crookedly, once again completely overshooting charming, and she cackles at me. 

“You ass! It’s so big, and it’s not even Spanish money! You _made_ that, little magic boy. You’re lucky it was actually gold, I wasn’t lying about that part. Gold is my true lover.”

“Jesus.” Burying my face in my hands, I scrub my palms over my face to try and get my shit together. “Okay, okay.”

“I’m _ready,_ Jean,” she says after a moment, so I stare up at her between my fingers. She sure _sounds_ sure, but... sighing loudly, I drag my hands through my hair. “I know you’re the big man in the ghost house,” she continues, leaning down to me again. “But some of us don’t _want_ to live forever. Some of us are ready to sleep.”

“B-but,” I protest, my voice feeble. She tilts her head kindly, waiting for me to try to talk her out of it, to try and offer her something she hasn’t already thought of and given up, some fairy tale bullshit I probably won’t even buy. I frown up at her, a tiny man standing in the radiant halo of someone who has accepted their fate.

Coming face to face with someone who is really, truly ready to fade is... unsettling. 

So often, those who must fade are forced to do so, kicking and screaming and dragging their nails through the shade up until the very last moment of their existence. Given the choice, nearly everyone goes through their door, passing the threshold into whatever actually happens on the other side of existence. Death isn’t the end step, it’s just the layover between life and something else.

Dulcinea’s not taking that last step, though. I have no idea how to find her door, and I really doubt she would tell me.

She’s content to sink into the silent darkness instead.

“I’m very old, little one,” she breathes, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I have seen many things, and I have been dead for a very long time. I’ve had a _long_ time to think this through. My mind was made up long before Hanji unearthed me, and as exciting as this adventure has been, my mind is still made. _It’s okay.”_

My gaze falls to her skirt again, biting my lip in an attempt to keep myself from crying some more. I believe her, I do. Still, some restless part of me wants to help her, to save her. Some part of me is scared for her, quaking in terror of the idea of just... stopping.

“Why don’t you go save _your_ world, hm?” I look up at her again. “Let me help you put an end to _el Diablo._ There’s no way without me, and deep down you know that too, under all that fear. Let me do something useful before my time runs out, okay?”

I open my mouth to respond, once again finding no words in my dry mouth. She snorts and ruffles my hair, standing up again with a loud sigh. 

She knows what she wants. I have to stop letting my little mortal panic blind me to that.

I stand up straight too, taking a deep, steadying breath before I stare up at her. “Thank you, Dulcinea.”

“My pleasure, shrimpy.” Her grin widens something fierce then, a wildfire exploding behind her shining eyes, and she cracks her neck with a genuinely _gruesome_ series of pops and snaps. My horrified face just amuses her further. “Whenever you’re ready!”

Shaking myself out, I jump in place a few times, trying to psych myself up for this. No more waiting. No more talking. No more hesitating. 

Godeater’s going down.

With a few loud huffs and another good rattle, I slap my hands against my cheeks, then look up at Dulcinea. “Let’s do this.”

She punches the air with both hands, her bracelets glittering and her howling warcry echoing through the distant universe, sending chills down my spine and setting fire to my blood. I jump up and down, heart pounding, and as her yowl trails to an end, her long stomach pulses with some dark, foul energy. 

My heart slams against my ribs.

The portal spins open, splayed all across her stomach, and it reeks of rust and ichor.

“God be with you, Jean,” Dulcinea grits out, her face obviously pained. 

Oh _fuck._

Before I pass out from the stench, I take a running jump, and it’s nothing if not pure, terrified adrenaline that propels me headfirst into the howling cataclysm of Godeater’s infested den.


	10. The End of All Things

The hurricane-force wind in this awful place shrieks as it hurls my frail body through freezing black chaos. I’m sure I’m screaming, but I can’t even hear myself _think,_ let alone the shrill sounds that explode from my burning throat only to be consumed by the deafening void. 

I can’t think, I can’t _breathe,_ so I curl into a tiny ball and fucking pray for landfall. 

There’s no water here, squeaks the feeble voice of reason beneath all the discord. There are stormclouds, thick with crackling lightning that snaps and flares around me in blinding, violent arcs, but even when I plummet from the turbulent heavens like a damn satellite, there is no rain.

I hit what feels like wet concrete, what breath I had left erupting from my aching chest, and give a pathetic, floppy roll before I’m left splayed across it on my back. I groan, dizzy and nauseous from the impact, and spit out a nasty, gritty mouthful of sand. The grains taste like ashes and smoke, filthy on my tongue and between my teeth.

My head’s spinning, disoriented, but there’s no time to recover, not here. No merciful pause in this place.

Flipping quickly into a crouch, I shiver in the howling wind and whip my head around, searching, heart pounding, eyes peeled for movement, for that accursed fractal starlight, but everything here is dead and painted in shades of charred arson grey. Nothing moves, despite the gusting frost flapping through my thin hospital clothes.

I’m on a beach, I guess. Or rather, what looks like it should be a beach.

There’s no waves, though. No storm-dark ocean to be seen. 

The jagged cliffs behind me tower high with monstrous evergreens reaching like skeletal hands toward the swirling doomscape clouds above, and the rocks seem to crash straight down into the pitch black sand that composes the endless shoreline. 

The burnt sand continues out, out past a displaced, rotted driftwood pier, out forever without a hint of the bubbling tide until the sand suddenly just... stops. Beyond that... I can’t even tell. The horizon is so dark it hurts my eyes, a complete absence of light that even the vast, forking lightning cannot illuminate.

There’s no fucking water here.

I clench my frozen fists and try to catch my breath, shaking feeling back into my limbs.

This place, Godeater’s playground, feels _real._ Not like the swimming pool drag of my previous wanderings. This is no dream. 

This is _hell._

I can’t lose it. Not now, not this early. It’s fucking _freezing,_ too cold to function, but I have to try. I have to take control, to _think._ Come on, something, I have to figure out how to warp this surreal madhouse to suit me. I have to bring back the ocean, maybe if I just—

I should have fucking known that this place was far too empty, far too quiet. Far too calm to house an evil like his.

It hits before I can even begin to get my shit straight.

_Agony._

It explodes through me like the lightning rending the damned sky, sudden and piercing and _fuck_ ripping through my stomach, beneath my ribs, pain _pain screaming shredding pain, I can’t breathe—_

I fall to my knees with a choked gasp and clutch my stomach, my aching stomach, _fuck did I get stabbed?_ It hurts, _Christ_ it hurts, but I can’t see what hit me, what’s digging sharp through my insides, and I rest my head against the frozen sand and gasp desperately for air while my hands slip over my stomach—

Slip?

My violently-trembling hands come away from my stomach coated in blood.

My blood.

_I’m bleeding, I’m bleeding—_

I’m weak, so weak, because all I can do is fall to my side and curl up around the locus of my torment and _scream,_ it _hurts_ and I’m bleeding out and I’m still alone, he’s not here, the bastard’s not _fucking **here!**_

Rolling onto my back, I arch off the sand and the pressure eases slightly, it’s like a spear through my fucking gut, it _hurts it hurts so bad—_

The world spins, the clouds swirling like a cyclone, and I try to blink the tears out of my burning eyes so I can see through the _pain, fuck,_ and the clouds swirl faster and turn and flatten and—brighten.

The clouds flicker and flash and stretch out along a steel grid, and then I’m staring up at the ceiling of my dim hospital room, and _fuck_ the pain is _worse_ and blood is gushing down my sides and out of my mouth and I’m shaking, shaking, my hands are fisted in the sheets and my teeth are gritted so hard it _hurts._

What went wrong? A trap? This is wrong, _wrong,_ this wasn’t supposed to—

A cracked, terrified whimper whips through the air, thick and choked, and this time it isn’t mine.

My frantic eyes widen, flickering around, searching, and the first thing they land on is a monstrous, dripping splatter of blood across the wall, right behind where Levi had been sitting. He’s not there now. He’s not there, Marco’s not there, and now I see the shattered metal remains of my snapped IV stand where it’s fucking _nailing me to my bed fuck it hurts,_ this isn’t a dream, I’m _awake and oh **god**_ everything is wrong, so wrong.

That sobbing whimper again, thicker, _wetter_ , and I dig my heels into my mattress and fail to focus my bugging eyes past the blurry foot of my bed. The room’s dark, shaking, spinning, my vision is snapping and unfocused and pulsing with adrenaline and the shattered hum of the broken light, and I see Moblit—or _fuck_ what’s left of him— slumped against the window, slowly sliding through the spray of his blood.

_Oh god._

I’m panicking, breathing short and dizzying, clawing at the sheets and heavy beneath the sedatives, and there at the foot of my bed—

_‘h ow does fail ure ta s te?’_

His profane voice blows through my brain like a fucking bomb.

_Godeater._

He’s so evil it warps reality around him, burning holes in the air and echoing with the screams of the damned, and he’s _rattling, fucking rattling, I can’t take that sound!_ I try to move my hands, try to scrabble away from his foul presence, but I can’t _move_ because I’m _impaled,_ forced awake by the shrieking of my dying body, _fuck_ it hurts too much to be a dream.

The malevolent oblivion behind Godeater’s eyes flares even as they narrow. _Joy._

Christ, he’s grinning, _grinning,_ malicious and hateful and so—so _proud_ of himself, his black eyes glinting red and reflecting the blood he’s spilled, and dangling from his burning fist is Marco.

_Marco—_

Panic.

When I try to scream, to call for him, for help, for _anything,_ my breath is thick with blood and it splatters down my chin, out of my nose, bubbling up from my insides, choking me and spraying out along my thin blankets, and Godeater’s not just holding Marco by his shirt.

He’s holding him by the—from— _inside. Through him._

Flashbacks to Pixis, to Melinoë, to the thousands of night terrors where I’ve watched him die, unable to save him, unable to protect him, unable to do fucking _anything_ but _watch._ Helpless and useless, nothing but a ghost, sobbing hysterically as Marco is once again ripped from my broken fingers. 

_Guilt._

Marco’s head falls back with a rattling breath, a death rattle, _I’ve heard that sound too many times_ and I’m snarling, struggling, struggling to lift my head, my hands, fighting off the sedatives so I can wrench this spear out of me and _fucking rip Godeater’s head off with my own hands,_ and Marco’s hands fall limply to his sides as his body goes completely lax.

_‘i’ve b een s o hun gr y j ean’_

Godeater’s eyes flash with glee, with absolute _pleasure_ as he yanks his hand out from between Marco’s ribs, crushing his stilled heart between his foul blackened claws, _he’s going to eat it I’m going to kill him kill him **kill him.**_

_Marco—_

_‘h ow will yo ur wea k li ttl e l over t as t e?’_

Adrenaline surges as he drops Marco at his feet, his forked, blackened tongue slapping out against his cracked lips as his gaze falls to the mangled flesh in his hand, and I manage to rip the steel stake out of my gut with weak, quaking hands, covered in blood, pain and grief and terror curdling and boiling and erupting into _rage._

_Marco first._

I spit out another mouthful of blood and try to summon my breath, ripping my IV out and clawing at the edge of my bed, _I’m going to kill him_ I don’t care who he’s wearing I don’t care I don’t _fucking care—_

I hit the floor with a wet splatter and a wracking heave, sliding in a pool of blood that reeks like rust and _meat,_ pain spasming over my shattered body, I don’t care, so I scramble onto my hands and knees and flail around under my bed for the gun taped there, it’s always been there, but now it’s _not_ and that’s not right but I don’t _fucking care_ because all I hear is Godeater’s pointed teeth ripping through Marco’s heart so _fucking loud_ and I can’t I can’t I can’t. I sob and choke out more blood, then turn and scramble through the cooling mess of gore on the floor, trying to get to Marco, trying to get to him, _please._

I have to get to him.

_‘you m ade my life so e as y jean’_

Fuck off—

_‘putt ing h im t o sleep let m e t ake over. p athetic’_

Fuck _off,_ he’s _rattling,_ rocks in a wooden bowl, slurping at his teeth and his vile lips and swallowing my Marco’s heart, swallowing his soul, this fucking irreverent piece of _garbage—_

_‘d id you think you could win?’_

I slide in Marco’s blood now, warmer, and dig my broken hands into his soaked shirt and _sob,_ his chest is— _fuck,_ I can’t, _I can’t,_ and Godeater stands over me to play with me before he fucking eats me, and _I don’t care._

He’ll take the world.

I don’t care.

I’m faint from blood loss and Marco’s pale, so pale, sticky with tears and dark blood, and nothing, _nothing_ matters to me. Nothing. I’ll die here too, and all of creation will fall into ruin.

Marco would be so upset.

Lifting my face from Marco’s lax, lifeless throat, my tacky skin stuck to his, I try to press his bangs back from his brow but everything is sticky with his blood, with my blood, _Christ_ at least his eyes are closed so I don’t have to watch him fade this time. 

I’m sobbing and I can’t stop, and _god_ just let him eat me, I can’t take this anymore, I _can’t._ I’m not even listening to the bullshit he’s spewing. I don’t fucking care. I don’t because Marco’s frowning even in death, his lips loose and already ghost-white.

My tears cut muddied paths through the blood splattered on his face as I drag my restless vision down his throat, to the gaping hole in his ribs.

Oh god, _god,_ Marco, _I’m so sorry._

His cross is completely cracked in half now, forsaken and broken beneath the unhallowed force of Godeater’s violence. Its halves rest in the black pool on his sunken chest, splintered and—and.

And still laid around Marco’s neck.

The world spasms, thrums, but not with evil. Something else.

I focus hard on that shattered wood, something, a thought, a memory, and the world twists and warps and shakes around me. 

Not Godeater. 

Me.

Ice forms in my veins. 

Godeater’s rattling above me, but I’m still not listening to whatever he’s mocking me with, because the cross that Marco gave me is _still around his neck here._

My hand shaking, eyes wide, I reach into my shirt and pull out his cross, still in one piece, still barely cracked, still fucking wet from the tears I’d shed for him in that in-between place.

My scattered, panicking brain slams to a halt. Everything stops. Reality bends in time with my rising blood pressure.

The cross fills my mind, floods out everything else, all the panic and fear and pain and blood and _Marco,_ and everything fucking clicks as the ice spreads and leaves me numb.

This is a lie.

Just as the thought echoes like a gunshot through my shell-shocked brains, Marco fades away into nothing. Just... gone. Never there. 

Despite all the pep talks, all the reminders, all the preparation, I fucking _fell for it. Again._

White noise rushes my vacant skull. My blood-soaked hands tremble now with violence instead of fear.

He _knew._

This piece of shit knew what I feared the most and, like some fucking cardboard cutout of a villain, he used it against me. Just like he did with Isaac, just like he did with all his other piss-poor illusions.

Just like every other fucking minor evil I’ve ever faced.

This isn’t new.

This isn’t even worse than my own nightmares.

_This isn’t real._

I exhale slowly, shakily, and the room clears of the false carnage because I’m sick of it, the rancid meat stench and the broken furniture gone with it. The pain in my gutted side snaps off like a switch. The blood on my clothes and on my skin and in my mouth disappears without a trace.

The only things that remain in the flickering light are me and my prey.

I am in control here.

And I am _furious._

The rattling walls of this deception crack deafening like thunder, a faultline shattering up and across the ceiling above us, the room crumpling like paper under the enormous hailstorm force of my wrath. The air pulses around me, displaced by my vicious power, humming like distant wardrums.

Enough.

I am _so tired_ of this fucking asshole digging around in my fears and picking cheap tricks to throw at me. I’m tired of falling for his weak, careless bullshit. I’m tired of every dark and awful thing I’ve ever faced trying to knock me down with my own persistent trauma.

I’m fucking _done._ Never again.

Standing slowly, I turn to face Godeater, and I don’t give a shit what he’s doing. Clutching his stolen head, rattling in pain from the crushing air pressure, struggling for control, _I don’t care._ He is weak. Too weak to overpower me here. Black blood drips from his obsidian teeth and congeals on his heaving chest, and he rattles _louder,_ echoing in my ears, sending chills over my frozen skin, but I don’t care.

This ends.

“Hey, fuck-o,” I growl, fisting my good hand at my side. He casts his tar-black gaze to me, weak and pathetic and vile, and all he can do is watch as I slam my hand against the wall, sink my fingers into the bubbling plaster, and _tear._

The world shatters beneath my grip.

_My world._

Godeater stares around us, his bare feet sinking into that awful black sand beach where he thought he’d be safe from me, watching the burning remains of his feeble illusion as they flutter to the salted earth around us. 

We’d never even left. It was a lie from the moment I crash-landed in this shithole, a last-ditch effort to save his rotting coward soul from obliteration.

Godeater likes playing with his food? _Fine._

So do I.

I will feed on his rising terror as I break him into tiny pieces and fucking _devour_ him. 

My heavy breath pours out as thick, curling black smoke, my malice exploding in rings like solar flares and licking in sparking cracks across the sand, wreathing us in fire, and oh, I can _smell_ his fear. 

It doesn’t matter if I lose some piece of myself here. 

In his living nightmare, _I_ am the devil, and he is my plaything.

I hope he fucking begs for his worthless life.

Phasing right into his distorted face, I wrap my fingers around his scrawny throat, and I wring his fucking neck while I think _real_ hard about coffins. I think about my confinement, my saltwater execution, my frozen isolation. The stink of the ocean pollutes the crackling, humid air. He snarls and rattles and thrashes, and he tries to warp reality, but fuck that. I hold it. I don’t know _how,_ but I don’t care. This is my world.

Clawing at my wrists, kicking as hard as he can, struggling like the worm he is, his twisted visage warps further, and he shows me his jagged obsidian teeth in some kind of grotesque smile.

_‘y ou b rin g me t o my o wn h o me? f ool—’_

“Shut the fuck up.”

I focus harder. _Drown us._

Drums from the deep, pounding like some infernal heartbeat, and what light remains in this shithole filters out and suffocates as wooden walls rise up around us from beneath the sand. Blackened driftwood, my well-known cage now built for two.

Around us, beneath us, above us, isolating him from his flimsy little safe haven, the drums crack loud and reverberate painfully in the confined space.

Hammering. Nailing the lid closed.

In my unforgiving grip, Godeater lashes out at me, choking on the salt-thick ocean air and coughing out flaming embers. With a snort, I shove him against the wall and back into a corner of my own, peering through the reeking darkness.

I’m not a fucking idiot. I’m done wasting time.

The pressure spikes, the air too heavy, too wet to breathe, and he gives up fighting me and starts trying to claw his way out, but even his coward’s strength can’t overpower me.

Beneath our feet, freezing water. 

It bubbles up from beneath the cage and laps at our heels, slimy and gritty and god, it’s _cold,_ so cold. He stares down at it with bulging eyes, frantically whipping his head around in search of a weakness in my torment. More water rises, foaming above my ankles, and I can’t help my manic grin as he shatters his starlight talons against the unforgiving wall.

Nice fucking try.

Water crashes around our knees, roaring with the force of the unseen tide, and he sloshes around, and shit, I can _hear_ the demons inside of him clamoring and screaming. He curls over them and scrabbles with jagged nails at his blackened stomach, obviously losing control.

_‘you’ ll b e trapp ed too!’_ He stares up at me, barely standing between the demons shrieking and the saltwater leeching him of his stolen strength. I reach out and pull the waters higher, higher, up above our waists just to hear him _howl. ‘y ou ’re tr appe d in h ere with me! i w i ll—’_

“Oh no, motherfucker,” I growl, slamming my hands against the shrinking walls. I’m panting hard in anticipation, absolutely _vibrating_ with glee, my blunt nails scraping against salted wood as the turbulent water rises to our shoulders. “ _You’re_ trapped in here with _me.”_

He _screeches,_ rattling and violent and desperate, and I flood the confines of our grave.

Closing my eyes against the tide, I drink in the pulses of his terrified flailing for just a moment longer, his last panicked attempts to take control of his own demise.

I haven’t forgotten.

It’s faint, but echoing from that place deep in the crushing blackness, I hear it.

A long, warbling cry.

The raven’s bell tolling for the last of a vile, primal breed of wickedness, signing an execution _long_ overdue.

\--

Drowning is cold. It hurts, too, _so much._ Shitty way to die.

I hope it hurt more for Godeater.

He’s dead. 

I can tell because the little forest temple he built himself in Eren’s mind has gone dark, a dead star collapsed in on itself, and I didn’t even try to escape it. Not without making sure our plan had worked. Not without making _sure_ this jackass was done.

Now we’re here, the two of us drifting beyond the psychic event horizon, his rotten corpse still pouring saltwater into the vast nothingness, his stomach caved in and flattened in the absence of his demon stuffing. They had crumbled into ash and char once they drowned in the saltwater I forced him to swallow. Don’t ask me how I know that.

I’m so fucking tired.

My body’s starting to ache again, now that I don’t have the rage to numb it. My chest feels hollow without it.

I think I used too much power. My brain feels cloudy, too full of smoke to even begin thinking of a plan. I had no choice, though. I had to end this.

My reward is vacant oblivion and a skeletal corpse for company.

At least he doesn’t look like Eren anymore. His mask had cracked and peeled away, revealing his true form, his gaunt, star-dotted skin, stained black like his hands and feet all over. He doesn’t have lips or eyelids apparently, which is really fucking gross, so I rolled him over pretty quick.

There aren’t even stars here. I’m trapped within this unholy singularity, too weak to swim and too tired to call out for help. I wonder if Levi would even be able to hear me. 

Will I wake up when the real sedatives wear off? Will I ever see my family again? 

Will I ever see Marco again?

Fuck, I promised to come back and give him a ring. I swore I’d make it.

I mean, I was half-bluffing, and he knew that too. But still.

I don’t wanna die like this. If I even can die. I don’t want this to be the rest of eternity for me, alone in some ruined psychic corner of the universe, cold and lonely and miserable. 

I want to go _home._ I want to marry Marco and take him away from this shitty place. I want to start over somewhere new, somewhere less infested, somewhere that doesn’t stink of our spilled blood and our horrifying memories.

This was supposed to be my last big job, but not in this sense.

There’s not much to do here but repeat these thoughts over and over, cycling through old ones when I run out of new ways to string words together, so I do just that until I’m catatonic with depression. I’m too exhausted to experience any other emotion. They all seeped right out of me when the blood rage fizzled out.

After what feels like a century, I start sending out what I like to imagine are beacons. Calls for help. Little pings to alert the mothership that I’m ready to be beamed up now. There’s no rhythm or rhyme to them. Just little psychic feelers or whatever, reaching out through all this darkness, all this nothingness in search of something solid.

I send out a dozen of them before I get something back.

It’s weak, but it’s there, some little return-fire pulses from somewhere far above. Or, what is relatively above where I am now.

Well, it’s not like I have fucking anything else to do here. I may as well follow.

For a moment, I stare over at the drowned corpse beside me and consider taking it with me, but fuck that. Let him rot here. If anyone wants physical proof that I won, they can suck my entire ass. _I_ know he’s done, and that’s fucking good enough for me.

If he comes back, someone else can deal with him.

My gig is up.

Shaking some of the fuzz loose, I flail around until I figure out how to move around in this place, and then I swim.

\--

Visions come in bursts around me, flickering like a host of broken television sets.

Levi’s bleeding. Profusely.

It’s pouring from his nose and staining his shirt, and one of his eyes is bloodshot to hell. Migraine.

Marco’s praying frantically, his hair standing on end and his tear-stained face deathly pale. Why is he so upset?

I’m confused. Everything’s coming in rapidfire pieces, disjointed and staticky and muffled, flashes of color and light and _overwhelming_ emotion. My chest hurts.

How did I get here? Where even _is_ ‘here’? Is this place real, or did I find another illusion?

Another flash like lightning, and I’m staring down at my own body. Limp, dripping sweat, white as a sheet, most of my face covered by a respirator mask while some dick in a lab coat barks orders.

Wait, shit, I think I’m dying.

This is terrible to say, but I’m not even surprised. Nor am I upset. I’ve been here so many times and in so many ways that it doesn’t even shock me anymore. Gone is the panic, replaced now with just a ‘huh, weird.’

I try to focus, to get more than pulsing glimpses of the scene. I need to figure out how to get back into my failing body, but it’s hard to do when it keeps fucking moving around. Kinda wish someone was here to help me out. The learning curve on this whole psychic thing was brutal.

When Levi flashes before me again, I send him a pulse wrapped in a whispered apology, and I feel his pained groan more than I hear it. Oops.

_he’s here, he’s—_

Digging my hands into my hair, I take deep breaths and try to will the scene to sit still, trying to latch onto it with my depleted brain power. Another flash, brighter than the last, which brings with it the thrumming vibration of Marco yelping as the wildly-flickering light above him shatters. God dammit.

_jean—!_

I wish I could talk to him, but I’m kind of convinced that he doesn’t actually have a psychic bone in his body.

This is so _frustrating._ I’m right here! I’m _here,_ if I could just—!

My irritation boils, setting my languid heart pounding, and before I can try to control them, I pulse a few more frantic times.

_fuck—_

_levi, we’re leaving—_

_**no!** _

I have to focus. I have to get my powers under control. How the fuck did I do it during the fight? Was that just the blinding rage? All the insane shit I did in that place, I didn’t even _think_ about it. It just happened, and I flowed right along with it, directing it without a second thought. It was so strong, too, so much more powerful than my feeble efforts in the spaces between.

How can I control it again?

_Dammit!_ Why didn’t Levi ever teach me how to use this shit?!

A flash beside me, the echoing sound of the window in my room splintering and blowing out. Shit.

Christ, I could _seriously_ hurt someone like this. I have to tell them to get out of the room, but Levi can’t take my screams and Marco doesn’t hear me. I don’t even know if Moblit’s in the damn room, or if any of the nurses can understand me. 

I wish I could get something more substantial than split-second snapshots. They flash around me, taunting me, moving all around with no consistency, no order. _Infuriating._ Is this what Hanji dealt with? No wonder they were so fucking weird. This is maddening, I just want to go _home._

Another voice joins the radio static fray, floating in and out of my plane. Calling my name.

Christa.

_Christa!_ Shit, she’s magical or whatever, maybe she can hear me!

I try to aim this time, focusing my call like a beacon, and I wait until there’s another flash—

She’s looking up at me.

She sees me!

Another flare boils up in my excitement, humming through the negative space around me, but I somehow manage to choke it back down before it blows up anything else. When the room appears again, Christa’s standing over me on my bed, reaching up toward me, _oh!_

I can reach her!

My control slips, and something explodes in my room, but she doesn’t flinch, and I don’t know how I manage to anticipate where she appears next, but I _do,_ and _fuck_ her tiny, frigid hands have never felt so fucking good wrapped in mine.

I kind of expected something more graceful than what I get, but you know what, I’ll fucking take it.

Rather than gently pull me down from the netherverse or whatever, Christa furrows her brow, and then she drops. She lands in my comatose lap, still tugging, using her sparse weight to haul my soul out until she’s leaned back against my empty body, and _wow_ this is weird.

With some substantial effort, I drag my legs out of the vacuum, and I’m out.

_I’m out!_

“Fucking _hell,_ Christa,” I sputter, still holding tight to her icy fingers. “What the fuck?”

Pointedly not letting go of me, she shakes her head and huffs. “We didn’t anticipate Godeater’s plane collapsing. I’m so sorry, Jean, we almost lost you. You’re in a weird space as it is.”

I look around then, squinting at the blurred, fuzzy outlines of the room, greyed out and frozen in place like someone hit the pause button.

“Wait, what is this?”

She grins up at me, cheeks flushed, her long, golden hair still splayed out across my hazy, respirator-covered face. “This is what necromancy looks like to the person doing it. You stop getting migraines after about two hundred years or so.”

“Wait—you’re—” Okay, maybe I’m sweating a little. If that’s possible.

“Yeah,” she wheezes, slowing sitting up again. “I had to pull you out of one of the limbos. Good thing you called to us, or I’d have never found you.”

“That _sucked,_ ” I blurt, for lack of a better response.

“You’ve never been conscious for this part before. Trust me, it could have been much worse. Here, hold tight and try to level yourself out, you look like an ass floating upside-down.”

I blink, taken aback, then grumble. “Aren’t you supposed to be _nice_ to dead people?”

“Not when they’ve been dead as much as you,” she retorts. 

Rolling my eyes, I let her win this time, but mostly because I really wanna get back into my body. My tongue poking out in concentration, I wrangle my non-body around until I’m sort of balled up in front of her, which appears to be good enough.

“Okay, now _don’t_ let go,” she says firmly, waiting for my nod before she moves. “I’m gonna hop down off the bed so I can put you back.”

I hesitate. “Is it gonna suck?”

Christa purses her lips, then shrugs. Joy.

I hold on tight, though, because I’m not really trying to find out what happens if I let go again. She clambers down out of my lap, guiding me down to slouch on the narrow edge of my bed. For someone as fucking teeny as she is, she’s awfully strong. Must be part of the whole immortal mage thing. Either that, or she’s just really good at necromancy after untold eons of practice.

“It’s both,” she replies to my unvoiced inner monologue.

Ugh. “God dammit, can everyone just stay out of my head? It’s so invasive.”

“Sorry, you think _really loudly_ for a dead guy.”

Huh. I tilt my head and squint. “Is that how I kept breaking shit in the room?”

She smiles fondly and shakes her head. “Ask Levi that question. Maybe once he’s not bleeding to death and stubbornly clinging to your bed.”

Oh. Shit. I stare at her cheerful expression, simultaneously impressed and flabbergasted. “Christa, you’re like five feet of solid badass, you know that?”

“Glad you agree. Hold on tight, Jean, I’m gonna take you home now. Close your eyes.”

I’ve definitely been here before. Her gentle instructions soothe my frazzled ghost, and I obey without question. This time, she eases me backward, and I hear her murmuring an incantation before the world fades out around me.

I’m going home.

\--

For whatever reason, I thought I would wake up instantly once Christa reattached me. Guess my wrecked body’s too much of a shitshow, or whatever.

When I do wake up, my entire being is fucking rioting with aches and pains, but I hadn’t really expected anything less.

The only part of me that doesn’t hurt much is my whole right side, somehow. It’s warm, comfortable, a solid presence that’s insanely soothing, so I groan somewhat and try to burrow further into it.

“Jean?”

Ah. That explains it. God, Marco sounds so damn tired. He’s wrapped around me on the bed like he’s been sleeping beside me for days. Again, he probably has been.

I’m really looking forward to a point in my life where waking up like this isn’t normal.

“I quit,” I rasp, my throat dry and my voice cracked. I sound like death incarnate, but Marco laughs, small and sweet and tearful, and he carefully buries his face in my likely-filthy hair with an even smaller sob. He’s shaking so much, so broken down under the weight of this whole ordeal. He’s not the only one, though.

I want to hold him, but I can’t really move so hot, so instead I just nuzzle into Marco and let him cry into me.

Maybe I cry into him, too. Out of relief.

And stress and exhaustion and happiness and maybe some horror too.

Okay, we both cry like tiny babies for a good long time. Grown men cry. 

“I’m s-so glad you made it home,” he whispers after a while, punctuating the thought with a little sniffle and a mildly-painful squeeze. I don’t object to it, though. 

“Me too, love,” I murmur, my good hand fisted weakly in his shirt. He’s wearing his own clothes now, at least, and his soft smell surrounds me and comforts my ragged spirit. No more hospital scrubs. “Me too.”

\--

This time, while we hold each other and cry, we do it with the blissful knowledge that we’re _done._

As far as we’re concerned, it’s over, and we’re retired. No more jobs. No more monsters, no more devils, no more megalomaniacal pissants for us to deal with. Our watch is officially over.

We take our sweet time recovering this time, and Marco fills me in once more. For the last time, he tells me what I missed while I was unconscious and/or dead.

Levi’s okay. He’d been stubborn about staying until he was sure I was back where I belonged, despite the agonizing pain of my apparently-deafening calls for help. He’s resting somewhere on our floor, Marco tells me, smiling a little as he adds that Levi’s been sleeping like a rock for something like two days, just like me. About damn time.

Eren’s alive too, well and truly alone in his body this time. Unsurprisingly, he’s severely shaken, and he has a very long stay in the hospital to look forward to. Marco tells me that Armin and Mikasa are with him, which works for me. As long as he’s safe, and he isn’t alone.

I really doubt that he’ll ever recover from what happened. Demigod possession is some twisted shit to begin with, but Eren’s been possessed since he was eight fucking years old. He had that asshole living inside of him, chipping away at his sanity for twenty years.

Thank god he has Armin and Mikasa, at least. Same as he always has.

As for me, I’m pretty fucked up. I tell Marco what happened in as much detail as I can remember, and he holds me close and tells me that it’s okay, that it’s _over._ That we won, because I was strong and possibly a little psychotic. 

We saved the world.

_I_ saved the world.

Again.

That’s more than enough for me. For real this time.

\--

I’m still recovering in the hospital when Marco gets all set up for his knee replacement. I don’t even have to threaten anyone to make sure he rooms with me afterward. The entire hospital staff seems petrified of me after my brief stint as a poltergeist. I’m not complaining.

While Marco’s in surgery, Levi pays me a visit, one that is long-overdue in my opinion.

“Okay, so what the fuck?” I blurt before he’s even wheeled all the way into the room. He rolls his eyes and parks it beside me, crossing his arms over his chest. “I demand to know what’s up with these weirdo powers.”

“I thought you’d have figured them out.”

I scoff, running a hand through my recently-washed hair. “I mean, I think I kinda got the dreamwalking thing on lock, but what about everything else?”

Levi sighs, staring at my blankets as he ponders. “All psychics can send out that pulse,” he says, lacing his fingers in his lap. “Yours is just particularly obnoxious. Work on that.”

“Yeah, okay, _how?”_ I spread my arms. “Teach me, sensei, I am ready to learn.”

“It’s not something you can _teach,_ dumbass, you just have to get used to wielding it. Anyway, your powers are completely different from mine. I don’t know how to use that shit.”

Grumbling loudly, I slouch down against the raised head of my bed and pout at him. It does approximately fuck-all, not that I had expected anything less. “Is there anything you _can_ tell me?”

He nods, surprisingly. “The dreamwalking and your powers are different things. You were born psychic, but you had to die to get the dreamwalking.”

I furrow my brow. “I have not always been psychic. You’re full of it.”

Levi snorts at me. “You’re just an idiot who never noticed.” Raising an eyebrow, he continues, “How do you think you managed to stay alive this long? It’s not like you’re good at fighting.”

“Hey, fuck you very much—”

“You’re unrefined. Raw.” I wrinkle my nose at that description. How unsexy. “Before you were aware of them, your powers only manifested in extreme emotional distress. Now that you know about them, you need to practice, or you could hurt someone.”

“Practice _how?!”_ I throw my hands up. “Levi, you’re the worst sensei I have ever seen. Can you be a _little_ helpful?”

“You’re telekinetic,” Levi scoffs. “I really didn’t think I’d have to spell it out for you.” Frowning down at my hands, I take a good few minutes think about that. Telekinesis, huh. “How many times have you reached for something at random and found exactly what you were looking for?” I blink up at him again. “How many times have you been in danger, only to have something strange happen to tilt the odds in your favor?”

My eyes wander. “Um. A lot?” He raises his eyebrows in a ‘duh’ sort of expression. “I mean. Well, one time I was getting my ass kicked by a ghast shapeshifter, and a stone fell out of the ceiling and squashed it. But I was in the old sewers by the river, those things are falling apart.”

“No they’re not, you moron. They’re more stable than most bomb shelters.”

“Oh.” Well then. He sighs loudly, but I ignore his sass. “Wait, how long have you known about this?”

Rather than respond, Levi just raises his eyebrows, which I take to mean ‘since the day he met me.’ I would say I know him that well, but with all this psychic mumbo-jumbo, I’m not so sure anymore. 

I don’t ask why he never told me. I spent most of my life as an unstable, angry wreck, and the last thing that mix needs is powerful telekinesis.

Sighing loudly, I lean my head back and rub at my eyes, trying not to aggravate my busted face too much.

I’m still trying to get used to the fact that it’s over. I’ve been so on edge for so long, moving from one plan to the next to the next, always thinking ‘what next?’

Now, there is no ‘what next.’ Not really, anyway. Not like the past few weeks, the past few months, the past year. The overdrive is off. What’s next is me sitting on my ass for a month solid, helping Marco recover from his knee replacement. What’s next is me pitching my (pretty damn awesome) ring idea to him. 

What’s next is decompression, and what comes after that is still a question mark.

“You’ll get used to it,” Levi comments on my _private internal monologue Jesus Christ, dad._ “Don’t call me dad.” I throw my hands up in disgust. “You just have to resist the temptation.”

I blink down at him, idly rubbing the back of my neck. “The temptation to _what?”_

He sighs quietly. “You’ve been doing this your whole life. You can’t just quit seeing things like this.” Levi lowers his gaze to his lap, and suddenly I can’t help but wonder which of us he’s talking to. “For a while, you’ll relax. But after a few weeks, a few months of quiet, you’ll start hearing the sounds in the dark. You’ll see the movement in the shadows. And the part of you that needs to chase it will start to itch.”

My mouth kind of goes dry while my stomach churns. Right now, that sounds _unbearable._ Later, though... who knows. 

Before I can respond, he runs a hand through his hair and looks up at me again. “When the time comes that you need to fight again, don’t forget that you’re not alone, wherever you end up. Your real family will still be here for you.” 

And with that, Levi turns his wheelchair around and rolls himself out. 

I gape after him, well and truly stunned. 

“Okay,” I call out after a minute. “Bye, I guess.”

Whatever. I’ll let him recoil from this rare moment of vulnerability. It’s how he’s always been, anyway. For now, I settle into peace and quiet once more. 

It’s... weird. Still really weird. It’s gonna be weird for a good long while, I think.

But shit, I _earned_ this.

I’m ready to be relatively normal for once, for however long the world will allow it.

\--

Marco knocks his initial post-surgery physical therapy out of the park, same as he always has. I swear to god, I only cried a little the first time he wobbled across the room with just a cane. And by a little, I mean I bawled like a child, and he had to hold my hand for about ten minutes. Whatever.

When we’re finally set to be discharged, I’m itching to see something other than the fucking hospital for the first time in what feels like years, and I think Marco’s right there with me. 

“I’m gonna sleep for a month,” I groan obnoxiously, slouching around the cab to help Marco climb out of it. He smiles at me as he follows me on crutches up to our apartment. It takes us an age to get up the damn stairs, which only makes me complain louder. As always, though, Marco tolerates it with the kind of grace only he has.

When we collapse onto the couch, he turns to lay his head in my lap, silently requesting pets. More than happy to oblige, I dig my unbroken fingers right into his soft, clean hair.

Peace and quiet.

Christ, it feels good. So goddamn good.

Slouching down slightly, I lean my head back against the couch and close my eyes, still gently combing my fingers through Marco’s mussed hair.

He’s half asleep when I look down at him again, his expression blissful and relaxed, and it’s such a fucking relief to have that face back. The way he frowns in his sleep when he’s stressed out or stretched thin breaks my heart. Like this, he looks ten years younger, gorgeous and happy and _mine._ Content here with me, with his head in my lap and my hands in his hair, nothing looming ahead of us but our malleable future.

“Hey, Marco,” I murmur, gently tugging on one of his cowlicks. He blinks blearily up at me and hums, trying to pretend he’s fully conscious. Fucking adorable. “I love you.”

“Mm, I love you too, Jean,” he sighs, carefully reaching up with his good hand to run his knuckles down my cheek with a sleepy smile. My big gay heart jiggles, so I catch his hand in mine and press soft kisses to all the mostly-healed cuts and scratches and abrasions and burns and Christ knows what else. After a few easy minutes of nothing but this, he grins up at me and bites his lip, his pretty eyes sparkling and wrinkling a little at the corners. “So, where’s my ring?”

I laugh at him, idly lacing our fingers together. “I don’t know if you noticed, sweetheart, but the hospital gift shop doesn’t exactly stock engagement rings.”

“I guess not. I think that’d be kinda morbid anyway.” I nod vaguely, rubbing my thumb along his. “Alright, I guess you’re off the hook for now, since you’ve been so supportive during my stay at the hospital.”

“Definitely all in the name of support.”

“Mhm. Not you being held hostage by Annie’s tiny fury.”

“You know,” I snort, letting our twined fingers rest on his warm chest. “I think that’s the first time I’ve served my whole sentence there. I wonder if Annie’s proud of me.”

“Why don’t you go ask her?” I pull a horrified face, earning a sweet giggle, before I shake that genuinely disquieting idea off. Given the choice, I’d rather like my insides to stay on my insides.

We have a day or so of down time before Marco’s outpatient PT kicks up, and if we spend most of it buried under a pile of blankets, wrapped tight around each other, that’s our business entirely.

\--

 

“You know,” Connie says, leaning over to check out my sliced-up ear now that the stitches are out and it’s healed up. “I don’t think it’s _that_ bad.” He sits back again, then nods. “Yeah, I’d still hit it.”

“Thanks boo,” I reply with a wink. He swoons dramatically and flops back across his couch, taking the opportunity to kick his feet out across my lap.

Sasha rolls her eyes and laughs, her hand resting on her still-tiny baby bump. “Jeez, Jean, maybe you should’ve donated sperm to Connie instead of me.”

“Oh god, can you imagine a hybrid of me and him?” I shudder. “That child would be gorgeous but _so_ weird.”

Sasha raises her eyebrow at me. “Are you saying the in-progress hybrid isn’t going to be gorgeous but weird?”

“Mm, definitely gorgeous, but if god is kind they’ll inherit your common sense and not my dumbassery. And also your ass. Booty like _pow._ ” I grin, and Sasha flutters her long eyelashes at me.

Marco snorts and tugs at my intact ear, leaning against my back to rest his chin on my shoulder. “Are you planning on getting pregnant too, Connie?”

Connie shrugs, wiggling up the couch to lay his head on Sasha’s lap, his ear against her belly. “Who knows. We’ll see how this one goes first.” He grins up at Marco, crossing his ankles in my lap. “You wanna be the donor, Marco? Mixing me and Jean could only lead to insanity.”

Spluttering slightly, Marco scratches his head and laughs, “I-if you really want me to. I don’t mind.”

Sasha gasps loudly, thumping Connie on the chest with an excited slap. “Connie, _freckles.”_

“Done deal!” Connie swings his feet off my lap and stands, stretching as he strolls casually into the kitchen. “I’ll call you up in three years. We’re doing the turkey baster thing again, though. You’re cute and all, Marco, but I don’t think I can soil your innocence like that.”

Marco flushes and chuckles, so I give him a lecherous grin and waggle my eyebrows, totally succeeding in flustering him even more. Too easy.

It’s been four months since we retired. Sasha’s pregnant, Connie’s threatening pregnancy, and Marco and I are engaged as hell. Our casts are all off, our stitches are all out, and Marco’s knee is in near-perfect condition. If there’s been anything weird, I haven’t heard shit about it, and I’m okay with things staying that way. 

These days, it’s quiet. Like, _actually_ quiet. Marco and I are still taking things easy. I imagine someone stepped up to take our place, but I’m not worried about it. I’m just a teacher now. That’s it.

Everyone’s recovering. We’re moving forward. About a week ago, I actually saw Eren in person for the first time since he got out of the hospital. He looks better. Not like that’s hard. He has a whole host of interesting new scars, though, mostly courtesy of Mikasa. He forgave her for them about four seconds after he woke up, before she could even ask how he was doing. He’s always been like that with her.

Armin and Mikasa are getting there, too. They’re all working toward being able to forgive themselves for what happened. It’s not like they had any control, anyway, especially not Eren. It’s a group process, the whole forgiving thing. Forgiving ourselves, each other, other people.

When we sat down to talk it over, Eren seemed genuinely surprised that I forgave him too. I don’t know why, it’s not like he could do anything. I know roughly how demigod possession works. Shit’s nasty. Luckily, he’s not alone with that feeling. He and Marco are growing closer, so that’s good. Marco’s the only one of our group who has even the slightest idea what Eren went through. I wish neither of them had to know what that felt like, but I’m glad they have each other, at least.

Levi’s getting better too, in his own special way. He’s still in the wheelchair. Always will be, most likely. He copes by running over my feet when I’m annoying him, among other things.

Erwin and Moblit have apparently formed some sort of weird super-nerd research team to make sure the local loremaster role is fulfilled. They’re not too bad, I guess. My bias insists that Marco’s better, but it’s not entirely my rose-tinted glasses. Marco’s legitimately good with lore. It’s eerie. I just nap while he does his thing, same old, and he shares whatever he learns with Moblit and Erwin.

We all miss Hanji. Their death still hurts. Maybe it always will, I don’t know. Wherever they are, though, I hope they’re having a good time. Knowing them, they’re probably making trouble. 

I guess that’s everybody, huh. Battered and traumatized and scarred for life, but bit by bit, we’re all slowly dragging ourselves back onto our feet. We’re getting there. If nothing else, we still have each other, and that in and of itself is something worth clinging to.

\--

It’s the fifth day of summer break for me when I have a major breakthrough with the telekinesis thing.

“Marco, come here! Comeherecomeherecomehere!”

“What, Jean? Are you okay?” 

I grin up at him, bouncing in place on the couch. I’ve had like seven cups of coffee in the last four hours, so I’m fucking _wired,_ and he raises his eyebrows at me. My grin widens, possibly to the point of pain, but I’m _so fucking excited._

“I did a thing!” Marco tilts his head at me, resting his hands on his hips. I bounce some more, grabbing my crossed ankles, before I blurt, “Imadeasandwich!”

Groaning loudly, he buries his face in his hands and laughs. “Jean, sweetheart...”

“A _whole sandwich!_ Go look!”

Marco, my sweet, gorgeous, perfect Marco rolls his eyes, but he obliges me, meandering into the kitchen to observe my masterpiece.

“Okay, I’m impressed,” he says, bringing the plate out into the living room. “This one’s way better than the last one.”

I punch the air with both fists and holler victoriously. “That is a _boss sandwich._ Go ahead, eat it, you can’t even taste the psychic powers.”

Chuckling softly, Marco comes to flop beside me on the couch, graciously splitting my supernatural ham and cheese with me. I rock idly back and forth, earning myself a teasing pinch, before I lean forward to sift through the pile of mail on the coffee table.

“I can’t believe,” Marco hums, “That you have telekinesis strong enough to level a _building_ and you use it to make sandwiches from other rooms.”

“Would you prefer I level buildings?” I ask around a mouthful of sandwich.

“Mm, I suppose not. Not without a permit of some sort.”

“Thought so.” I furrow my brow, then pull a fat brown envelope out of the mail stack. I hadn’t noticed it before, but it’s addressed to me. No return address. “What’s this?”

“Hmm?” Marco blinks at the envelope, then says, “Oh, that came a few days ago. Sorry, I thought you noticed it.”

“Nope.” Cramming the rest of my sandwich into my face, I set to ripping the envelope open. Inside is a letter, and two other envelopes. Weird.

When I unfold the letter, my stomach kind of drops out.

“Hey, Marco...”

“Yeah?”

“You said this came a few days ago?” Marco nods, turning toward me. I stare down at the familiar script, unable to keep myself from tearing up slightly. “It’s... from Hanji.”

Marco’s eyebrows shoot up, his teeth catching his lip. He sets the plate on the coffee table and scoots up against my side, sliding one arm around my waist as he leans in to investigate.

\--

_Jean,_

_I imagine you’ll be surprised to receive this letter. Don’t worry, though, I’m definitely still dead, no funky business here. That’s a weird thought... well, everyone dies, I suppose. You more than most people. Is that joke old yet? Not like you can stop me from making them, not if you’re reading this._

_Anyway, there’s a purpose for this letter, other than to poke fun at your transient mortality._

_If I’ve died, there’s a 97.8% chance that I was in the middle of an experiment. Or ten. Probably ten. You know me._

_Moblit can take over most of my work, as I’m sure you’re aware. There is one experiment that he can’t pick up for me, though, because he never knew about it. Only you did._

_If you recall, we spoke briefly about some different forms of lycanthropy. You expressed concern in particular about one method. I won’t say which here, I know you remember now. As a precaution, before we went under Old Trost, I removed that particular gopher from my lab and sent him on a trip to a trusted associate of mine in Tangier, Morocco._

_Jean, I want you to pick up where I left off. You know what I was going for there. If anyone (that isn’t me) can do it, it’s you. You have the brain and the motivation to solve the riddle._

_Along with this letter, I’ve attached a sealed envelope with my methodology and data thus far so you can continue in my stead, if you so desire. Doing so would unfortunately require you to transfer to Tangier, but you’ve spent your whole life in Trost and we’re tired of your face. As incentive (or maybe an outright bribe), there is a spot in my associate’s lab with your name and PhD candidacy on it. As far as the public is concerned, you’re researching infectious virology. Under the table, so to speak, you’ll be taking on my work. Technically also infectious virology. You know, if anyone asks. But perhaps you should change the subject rather quickly if they do ask. Try to be sneaky._

_Hey, you kept saying you wanted to go back to grad school, right? Here’s an option for you, if you’re feeling it. I sincerely hope you are. Between the two of us, there’s real hope for a cure._

_I hope you and Marco are doing well. I can’t say for certain at this juncture, but I’m quite sure that I miss you all. I mean, as of writing this letter, I literally just saw you yesterday-ish, so I don’t miss you that bad._

_Good luck, Jean. With everything._

_Hanji_

_(PS, can you deliver the second envelope to Moblit? It’s personal and really kind of embarrassing for both of us, so I’d rather you not read the contents. Also please try not to be a twat when you give it to him, he’s been through a lot. Probably.)_

_(PPS, I’m not sure if Levi grew the balls to tell you yet, but he’s stupidly proud that you consider him your adopted father. I’m not sure he ever stopped hating your real dad. Also he might have ordered a hit on your brother recently, but he’s being unusually vague about it. I don’t know why. He always tells me the juicy gossip when he orders hits. What an ass. Be extra nice to him, he’s small and angry.)_

\--

Marco lets me cry on him for a while before we talk about Tangier, which is much appreciated, if we’re being honest. I get it all out of my system that way.

“Well,” he murmurs, idly scratching the back of his head. “We were talking about relocating, right?”

“Yeah, but to _Morocco_?” I chew on my nails as I think it over, comfortably perched in his lap. He rests his hands on my thighs and hums, blinking down at the folded-over letter, before smiling up at me with an encouraging pat. 

“It’d certainly be different. _And_ you’d get to go back to school, like you kept wanting to do.”

“True.” I sigh and lean into him, resting my cheek on his shoulder. “Would you come with me?”

Marco chuckles quietly, folding me in his arms and squeezing gently. “Of course I would. We’re getting married, after all.”

“What would you do out there?”

“Hmm.” Tilting his head back, Marco stares at the ceiling in thought. “Well, probably learn Arabic, firstly.”

“I mean, like, jobwise,” I laugh, poking him in the belly.

“Well, from what I understand,” he murmurs, “In certain situations, loremasters can make a fairly sizeable living in some areas. I might be wrong, but I think Tangier might be one of those places.”

“What, so you’d write lorebooks?” I blink up at him. 

He shrugs casually. “Maybe. Maybe I’ll find lorebooks and sell them. Or any number of shady things, really, there are a lot more options than one might think.”

“You criminal, you,” I tease, leaning up for a noisy kiss. “What about the church?”

“I love my church, you know that.” With a soft sigh, Marco pauses to run a hand through his hair. “But I think we both need to leave Trost. Even with the congregation and our family’s support, we’ve been through so much here. It’s... well, it’s painful.” I nod, leaning my forehead against his. Nuzzling me gratefully, Marco hums and squeezes me again with a smile. “I think I’d be okay taking a break from being a reverend. It’s not like my faith relies on preaching, anyway. It’s about helping people.”

“Yeah, that’s true.” Exhaling slowly, I slide my arms around his shoulders and close my eyes.

We sit quietly for a while then, pondering the road ahead.

\--

In the end, we decide to move to Tangier after the wedding. I want to start doing research again, and finding a cure for lycanthropy is a damn tempting cause. 

Also, I’m pretty sure Marco wants to call me ‘Doctor Kirschtein’ while we’re fucking. Even if it’s not a burning desire of his, it’s certainly a burning desire of mine. Which is totally not weird at all.

We promise to come visit a few times a year, especially once Sasha’s baby comes. Overall, though, everyone’s excited for us. We’re excited as hell, too. Nervous, but excited.

This is a chance to make new memories together, somewhere where we won’t always know exactly where to look to find something from the lower planes, where we won’t know which bloodstains down which alleys belong to us, where we won’t have to relive half a dozen previous jobs just walking to the corner store. It’s a chance to start fresh, to be able to forget some of those more grisly scuffles.

Of course it’s gonna be nerve-wracking. It’s _Morocco,_ for fuck’s sake. I’ve never even left the country before.

But as intimidating as it is, having Marco by my side makes every challenge we face seem like it’s within my grasp. I’m not alone in this, and neither is he. As long as we have each other, we can do whatever the hell we want. We can reach for the stars.

As we get ready to start this new chapter in our lives, we stand side by side, and it seems to me that the stars shine just a little brighter for the two of us.

 

 

_The End._


	11. Something Old, Something New

After a few months of mutual indecision, Marco was surprised that I wanted to get married on a beach. I can understand why. I mean, I’d just lived out one of the most twisted, awful experiences of my life on a hellscape photonegative of a dry shoreline, it stands to reason that I’d never want to dig my toes into the sand ever again.

Still, there’s something about it.

We went to the beach once Marco’s knee was strong enough, once it was warm enough and dry enough that neither of us would have to limp much. I wanted closure, I guess, and I wanted him to be there with me when I found it.

I stood barefoot in the bubbling surf, sinking slowly into the wet, glimmering sand for hours, and I felt none of the horror or the grief or the guilt I had anticipated.

It was quiet that day, on the beach we went to. Just birds and rolling waves, a gentle sea-salt breeze that stuck to my face and gathered on my tongue, and in the rhythmic swell of the tide, I found grace.

Everything there was exactly as it was meant to be. Nothing was twisted or cracked, and the dunes of dry sand behind me shifted quietly and predictably, and tracing the rolling waves with my eyes all the way out to the curved edge of the earth brought me nothing but peace of mind.

Because of my struggle at the end of creation, the mortal world slept undisturbed. Exactly the same as it was before everything went to hell. Beautiful and serene and _normal._ Unchanged. Unscarred by the threat of a towering evil. 

Sweet, silent proof that we’d overcome damnation and lived. Again.

“Hey, Marco,” I’d murmured, reaching out to catch his fingers in mine, and he’d looked up at me from where he sat in the wet sand beside me. “Let’s get married here.”

A surprised silence, followed by him gently relying on my strength to pull himself up, before he’d wrapped his arms around my chest and rested his chin on my shoulder. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright.”

And we’d stood in easy quiet a while longer, watching the steady, even rise of the tide, our fingers comfortably laced together. 

\--

The wedding was small and informal, just like we’d wanted it to be. Just our closest family, the ragtag assortment of people who mean the world to us, and vice versa. Everyone who survived the depths of hell with us, who held us up along the way. Everyone who carried some portion of that weight in their chests.

We set up folding chairs, and Levi begrudgingly let me float him across the sandy beach without _too_ much complaint. I suspect it was because most of his energy was devoted to maintaining his composure. 

Our rings had healed nicely by then, too. Rather than try to decide on metal or stone, we chose to display our love in ink on our skin, a narrow, intricate ward for strength and protection worked into a band around our ring fingers.

I’ll spare you the gruesome details of the ceremony. Not because you don’t want them, but because I don’t think I could put into words how _perfect_ Marco was then. How gorgeous he was standing before me, the tears rolling freely down his face a mirror image of mine, the quiet exchange of our vows given strength by the lilting cadence of the rolling tide around us.

For that moment, lit ablaze in the warm glow of the setting sun and soothed in turn by the foaming waves lapping at our bare feet, still floating in the blissful wake of our shaky vows, I felt within our joined souls the satisfied sigh of all our distant lives. For just that moment, every universe settled in quiet observation of our hard-earned peace, and all was still.

If you don’t mind, I’ll keep that memory for myself.

I _will_ tell you that the tenderness of our promising kiss was eventually broken by Connie’s bawling. As we laughed at him, leaning into each other and grinning bashfully at our small, tearful audience, the distant stars continued on, content to leave us to the rest of our lovestruck lives.

Together.

\--

We’ve lived in Tangier for about a year now. 

When our workload permits, we like to take evening walks together, strolling slowly through stony streets as we bask in the quiet world we build around ourselves, within each other. It keeps his knee strong, and it gives us the chance to put aside everything else and just _be._ It’s nice.

“Did I show you the picture Mikasa emailed me yesterday?” he asks one warm night, a wide smile quirking his pretty lips. “Of Eren and Natalia?” 

I blink at the twilight sky. “No, you didn’t. He’s still babysitting for Connie and Sasha?”

“Every chance he gets. You know he loves that little girl.” 

Laughing softly, I run my fingers along a rough stone wall as we turn toward the piers, following our usual route. “No, you didn’t. Remind me when we get home. Is he crying in this picture too?”

Marco laughs, loud and easy, and nods. “He’s trying not to, you can tell, but she’s smiling and grabbing his cheek, so.” I snort, shaking my head. Eren’s so weak to that kid. Not that I blame him, she’s a real charmer, if I may say so. Marco chuckles, “She sent me a picture of Levi holding Nat, too.”

“Ooh, was _he_ crying?”

“Yup.” 

“Hah! What a _dad.”_

Raising an eyebrow, Marco bumps his hip against mine and teases, “Jean, need I remind you of the last time we visited?”

I stick my tongue out at him, earning a bright grin. Yeah, I cried a little every time I held her. Couldn’t help it.

If nothing else, that kid’s gonna grow up with a huge assortment of weird, doting parents. I can’t decide if she’s lucky for it, or if she’s doomed to a lifetime of embarrassment. Probably both.

“How are things at the lab?” he asks after a few content minutes, smiling down at me. I shrug, lacing my fingers over the back of my neck. 

“Same old. I’m still trying to lay the groundwork for vaccine trials, when I’m not drowning in paperwork.”

“You’re moving quickly, yeah?”

“Mm, yeah, but Hanji did a lot of the front-end stuff for us. They’re the reason I’m not ripping my hair out over the genetic sequencing.”

Marco hums quietly, turning us down the riverfront, and we fall into comfortable quiet again. I keep him pretty well updated on things at school, half in interest of including him and half to keep myself sane. Leading a double life research-wise is kind of giving me grey hairs, but whatever. I’ll live. 

In turn, he keeps me in the loop on his lorekeeping. As I understand it, he’s become a household name in the occult underground here, between his knowledge and his expansive skill set. He’s very modest about it, unsurprisingly, but I make sure he knows that I’m as proud of him as he is of me.

All in all, everything’s going pretty much according to plan here. Unusual, but you know what, we’re not complaining. I do my research, he writes his spellbooks and whatnot, and neither of us are left wanting for anything. 

For now, we’re just living our lives in peace. 

Still, there are undeniable echoes of our former lives in everything we do. I hadn’t ignored Levi’s warning.

I still carry a knife or four, all hidden in my clothing. I keep in shape, as does Marco. If anything, he’s even more deadly with a spear now than he was before, which of course leaves me climbing him like a tree before he even has a chance to wash his post-practice sweat off. Just as I like him.

We still make wards and charms when we have downtime, and our house is subtly covered in anti-spooky-shit defenses. 

When the itch comes, we’re ready for it.

Near the end of our walk that night, we pass an alleyway that’s far darker now than it usually is, and both of us slow down a little as we process the snarling, scuffling sounds coming from the shadows. As we come to a stop, we glance at each other, both of our hands wordlessly shifting to concealed weapons.

“Ghoul,” I murmur, and he nods his agreement.

“I’ve been hearing rumors about a nest nearby,” he breathes, quirking an eyebrow at me.

“Huh.” A beat passes before we both grin, somewhat sheepishly.

“Old habits,” he chuckles.

“May as well, right?”

He nods. “Since we’re here.”

My own grin widens, my heart starting to beat a little faster in giddy anticipation, and I find a similar light shining in his expression. I cast a glance up and down the narrow, empty street before I lean up on my toes and brush my lips against his.

“Love you, Marco,” I mumble, gently nudging my nose against his.

“I love you too, Jean,” he replies, brushing the cobwebs off of his half of our pre-fight ritual as well, and when we duck into the pitch of the alley, we move in silent, perfect unison toward our target.

Seems like it’s high time for both of us to come out of retirement, anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you.
> 
> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)


End file.
